Cloud Storage: Definition, advantages and disadvantages

Hi everyone!

Today we are going to speak about cloud storage servers. Do you know what they are?

A cloud storage server is an Internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. It allows users to upload files that could then be accessed over the internet from a different computer, tablet, smart phone or other networked device, by the same user or possibly by other users, after a password or other authentication is provided (Wikipedia).

Advantages and disadvantages

On the one hand, regarding its advantages:

1. It allows us to storage our files and access them wherever we are, as long as we have internet connection. This means that we could be working on something at home, go on a trip, and continue working on that if we have internet in our destination.
2. It makes it much easier to work in teams, as several people can create, and share and work on a document or sets of documents or storage all the documentation and important files of the team project in a shared online folder.
3. It enables us to synchronize our devices and automatically share our documents/photos/videos, etc. from our smartphone to our laptop or computer or tablet. It is an easy and fast method of having all our useful files (songs, photos) with us, regardless the device we have in our hands.

On the other hand, a cloud has also a number of disadvantages:

1. Security: even though protection and privacy is one of these companies’ greatest concerns, it has become very common to read in the news that a famous person account has been hacked (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/27/pippa-middleton-takes-high-court-action-after-icloud-photos-hack/). As a result, even though these companies promise again and again that their servers are secure, there is always the possibility of a skilled hacker getting your information.
2. Most of the cloud storage companies have a storage limit in the free version. Therefore, you need to decide which files you want to upload and keep in the cloud or pay for more storage.
3. You depend on the internet connection. If you have no connection, therefor you have no access to your data.
4. You will need to download the software in your different devices if you want to link and synchronize your files in all of your devices.

 Cloud utilities used every day

I’m a person who uses a few of these services. I believe dropbox is a very useful tool to keep your files and work with colleagues from other parts of the world. Google drive and docs are also very interesting services that allow to share information and files and to work simultaneously on a specific file. Also, I find the OneDrive service from Microsoft very interesting, similar to dropbox and Google Drive, but with more storage.

Links to pages and resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_hosting_service

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/27/pippa-middleton-takes-high-court-action-after-icloud-photos-hack/

http://bigdata-madesimple.com/5-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-cloud-storage/

 http://cloudacademy.com/blog/disadvantages-of-cloud-computing/

http://www.top10cloudstorage.com/advice-article/cloud-computing-disadvantages/

http://www.opencloudmanifesto.org/what-is-cloud-storage-types-advantages-and-disadvantages/22

https://www.thebalance.com/disadvantages-of-cloud-computing-4067218

I hope you have enjoyed this post. See you soon!

Interaction in PE lessons!

Hi again!

Today we are going to speak a little bit about methodology and how to interact with our students and provide interaction situations and opportunities.

As always, we are going to speak from our subject point of view: Physical Education in the Obligatory Secondary Education (ESO). 

What is the methodology I sue in my lessons?

Usually, I like to create real life situations as soon as possible in my lessons in order to help the students realize the usefulness of what they are learning. We usually start by learning some basic actions or skills that are needed to put into practice (for example some technical actions such as passing the ball or hitting the tennis ball with the racket in the different possible ways (with one side, with the other) but I try to make it as practical as possible. For example, instead of repeating sequences of passes, I create a game where passing is the main action and students learn not only how to pass, but when to pass (some decision-making involved).

How do I interact with my students?

As a result of the practical philosophy of my subject, interaction with my students is constant. I usually explain a situation or a problem and I create small groups (3-4 students) that need to solve it by practicing it. I like to go group by group asking how they are doing, giving tips or feedback, or answering any doubts they may have.

Depending on the content, they may also have to work in bigger groups (8 students), or in pairs or individually if they need to learn a persona skill. However, I like asking everyone how is it going and providing feedback about their performance.

In general is a very interactive subject where students are moving all the time, they are speaking to one another and debating and solving motion situations by interacting with each other.

List learning and teaching strategies to promote interaction in class. Advantages and disadvantages.

• By organising them by pairs of students. While one is performing the action, their partner is giving him/her some feedback about the performance. 
• Advantages: they become responsible because they have to correct their partner, in that way they also learn how to carry out the exercise. 
• Disadvantages: students are not always capable of correcting their partner’s mistakes. The teacher needs to be paying attention and helping everyone.

• Creating small groups and giving them a problem to solve (let’s see which group is able to get to the other part of the gym with the least amount of points: each foot = 4 points, each hand or knee = 2 points). 
• Advantages: they develop not only physical skills, but also social, cognitive and emotional skills. They interact with their equals and share and contrast opinions. 
• Disadvantages: this type of activity is not possible always, the content needs to be adequate for this.

• Giving them some freedom to regulate and decide the rules in order to increase everyone’s participation. For example, in groups of 8 students, organise yourselves to play volleyball (4 vs 4), but you need to create your own rules in order to make the activity funnier and increase everyone’s participation: “ok, we are going to allow 4 passes within the team, or we are going to allow to catch the first ball, or we are going to allow to bounce once, or we are going to make a rule that before passing the ball to the other side, people from both sex (a boy and a girl) need to touch the ball) 

• Advantages: very practical and real-life: they need to discuss and make agreements among themselves.
• Disadvantages: sometimes they agree to change the rules so much that they are not developing the skills you were planning at the beginning.

• Adapting the rules of the official games and sports in order to improve the quality of the practice: I’m not interested in them learning soccer, but in them learning how to cooperate with their teammates to score a goal. Therefore, only two touches on a row are allowed per person.
• Advantages: it is a teaching way to improve interaction and participation.
• Disadvantages: students that perform well the real sport may complain.

An this is all for now, I hope you like it!

How to use wordle

Hi everyone!

Today I've discovered a very interesting and useful tool: wordle! Do you know what it does?

I think a picture is worth a thousand words! Look at this!

 

It's cool, isn't it? And it is very easy to use, just enter http://www.wordle.net and write down some words, the more times you write a given word, the bigger it appears. Easy, right? And it can be a very nice way to show some of the most important words of a given topic, I think it is a very easy and interesting tool, don't you?

Using Corpora for our lessons

Hi!

In this post we are going to speak about Corpora, which are online tools to see how a word is used within a specific context.
This tool could be of great help when we are not exaclty sure as to how to use a word or expression, these tools will provide us with plenty of examples which may help us understand how it should be used.
For this post, we are going to use two types of Corpora:

• The British National Corpus: http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/
• Linguee: http://www.linguee.es/ 

As an example for this post, we have looked a quite common collocation: keep in touch.
As we can see, Linguee offers as some translations of the different parts of the collocation, as well as a large number of examples that will help us see how it is used. Morover, it provides us similar expressions using those words (keep sth, keep to, touch, touch sth/sb), again creating a learning cycle that will help us learn new words and expressions.

On the other hand, the British National Corpus has provided us with up to 224 examples of this expression, which could help us understand the different contexts this word is used.

I hope this information has been of use to you. See you soon!

More English tools for our lessons: Thesaurus

Hello!

In this post I'm going to present a very interesting tool: Thesaurus. Have you used this tool?

Thesaurus is a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms. And it can be extremely helpful when we aim to increase our vocabulary or when we need to write a word several times and we don't want to repeat the same word. It is an excellent way to learn new words, the slight differences among them, and to know their antonyms as well.

For example, for this post, we have search the word: Exercise. Have a look at the results of our search:

As you can see, it gives us words such as action, activity, movement, which are directly related to our subject physical education. It also gives us synonyms such as schoolwork (the exercise of a book, calisthenics (related to a type of gym exercises) or discipline. On the other hand, is funny to see that it gives us some antonyms such as "fun" (the opposite of exercise is fun, which it is not entirely wrong) or rest. 
Moreover , if we scroll down, we'll see some synonyms of the closest words (action, activity), and therefore the learning cycle will never end. 

When will we use one or another word? Well, it will depend on the context, of course. Each word has a slightly different use, and it serves us and our students as a very powerful tool to learn when and how to use these words in their adequate context. It's the magic of a language!

English tools for our lessons: Online dictionaries

Hi everyone!

In today’s post, I’m going to speak about the different tools that we have on the Internet when aiming to prepare our lessons in English. In this sense, one of the most powerful tools is the online dictionaries.

For this post, I’ve chosen three dictionaries (WordReference, Merriam-Webster, Oxford dictionary), and I’ve decided to look a very popular and important word within our subject: endurance.

WordReference: (the ability or strength to continue or last, esp. despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions) it offers us the option to change its pronunciation (up to 7 options from Jamaican to Scottish), as well as giving us up to 4 different definitions and some of them with an example. It also shows us a synonym and its etymology. Moreover, it shows us a large number of entries related to this term and some forum links where this term has been discussed.

Merriam-Webster: (the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity) it offers us just one example of pronunciation, followed by 3 definitions and some examples. However, this dictionary offers us a large number of synonyms, way more than those provided by the previous dictionary. And finally, it also provides a definition for kids, which could be a very helpful tool for our physical education lessons.

Oxford dictionary: (the ability to endure an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way) this page offers us as well up to 4 types of pronunciation. It is the dictionary that offers us the largest amount of examples (up to 20 examples!) and a few synonyms. It also provides some information about the origin of the word.

Which one is better? I couldn't say. As you can see, each dictionary gives us different advantages and disadvantages. I would probably use wordreference when I’m interested in how it is said, the Merriam-Webster when I’m looking for synonyms or to look for an easier definition, and the Oxford when I really want to see how the word is used within a sentence.

Finally, I’ve also used the too “Dictionary for English language learners” (http://www.learnersdictionary.com/), which shows us an easier and more understandable definition, while keeping the essence of the term (the ability to do something difficult for a long time). This tool, together with the dictionary for kids, could be a great instrument for us teacher to use when preparing or aiming to adapt the vocabulary of our lessons to the student’s level of English.

Oxford dictionary: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/endurance

Merriam-Webster dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/endurance

WordReference dictionary: http://www.wordreference.com/definition/endurance

I hope this information is useful for you!