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!

Using English in our physical education lessons

Hi again!

Today we are going to speak about the use of the English language in our lessons, in this case, in a typical lesson of the first period of the year (September – December) for 4^th of ESO. Throughout this year, students will learn how to carry out a specific warm-up depending on the following activity, to calculate their heart rate in order to control the intensity of the exercise being performed, or the different strategies to improve their endurance (jogging, fartleck, interval training), flexibility or strength (circuit training).

As the months go by, students will learn specialized vocabulary and they will know how to improve their quality of life. They will learn a number of definitions including physical fitness, physical activity, physical exercise, a fartleck or an interval training or a circuit training program, etc. 

Moreover, they will learn the different parts that a warm-up has, and what its objective is. What type of training is the best one to improve their health, or the type of diet that is recommended in order to eat healthy,

On the other hand, the students are bound to experience many different types of linguistic exchanges, such as:

• -          How do you control the intensity of your training? What are the lower and upper limits of your heart rate that you should take into account when improving health is the objective of your training? What should you do in case it’s too high/low?

-         Students will need to control their heart rate and increase/decrease the intensity of their training, they will have to write down their eating habits for one week and analyse them and suggest changes in order to make it healthier, or create their own training program (for how long? At which intensity? Doing which type of exercise?) aiming to improve their health.

In conclusion, we have seen throughout this post that during our physical education lessons, the English language is very useful and using it in our daily routine is a very interesting and practical way of learning this language.

What about integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in Physical Education (PE)?

Well, the first impression could be appalling, but if we really think about the benefits of using the new technologies in our classes, we would come to realise that they offer us a lot of advantages.
Look at this video to get some ideas:

What do you think? Isn't it interesting? Do the ideas showed in the video inspire you to do different things in your classes?
From my point of view, this video shows us in just 2 minutes a number of very interesting examples. We can use ICT to motivate a student (as a challenge to improve their physical condition), to create a competition among students, to increase their participation in class, to explain and do things differently, etc.
In summary, this is just an example, but the options are endless. Do you think you could use ICT in your PE classes? I'm sure you come with many examples if you think about it for a while.
Be brave and let's try to use the new technologies to our advantage!

What's a blog?

Hi again! In this entry I'm going to explain what a blog is.

Briefly, a blog is an easy, quick, and very interesting way of providing frequent information in a chronological fashion for others to read (Scocco, no date). This information can be of a certain topic (sports, health, food, cinema, etc.), and it's usually written in an informal way in order to make the reader comfortable and close to the author of the blog (http://howtostartablogonline.net/what-is-a-blog/). It''s a way of expresing oneself and to provide an insight about a certain topic while also having fun in the process (VanFossen, 2005).

From an educational point of view, it could be considered as an exceptional tool, as it enables students and teachers to create a learning-writting community, encourages students to look for information, to think it through, and to create a well-written opinion (grammar and structure wise) (Learning and Teaching Effectively Network, no date). It can be used to create small work groups, to encourage the students to read from very different sources and to elaborate (think, create) a well-defended entry. Finally, it is also an excellent way of expressing your thoughts, of being creative and be yourself (Knapp, 2016).

References

• Learning and Teaching Effectively Network. Innovation in Learning an Teaching Interaction, reflection and IT. Chapter 3: "Project Work through Blogging".
• Scocco, D. What is a blog? [Website]. Available at: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/what-is-a-blog/
• No author. Blog vs Website: the difference between a blog and a website. [Website]. Available at: http://howtostartablogonline.net/what-is-a-blog/
• Knapp, J. (2016). How to Start a Blog. [Website]. Available at: https://www.bloggingbasics101.com/how-do-i-start-a-blog/
• VanFossen, L. (2005). Learning about blogging and how to blog. Available at: https://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/08/29/learning-about-blogging-and-how-to-blog/

 

Presentation

Hi everyone!

Welcome to ICT and Physical Education!

In this blog we will be seeing a lot of interesting facts about health, physical activity and physical education, I hope you'll enjoy it!

My name is Angel Gabriel Lucas Cuevas, I'm a sport researcher in the University of Valencia and I mainly focus on the effects of physical activity, physical education and biomechanics on the human health and quality of life.

I've worked abroad for quite some time (in Canada and in New Zealand) and I have the Certificate in Advanced English of Cambridge.

Regarding my experience with technologies, I work with computers everyday, working with Excel, creating presentations with Power Point, and using more specific software packages needed for my work as Matlab or SPSS. Usually, I have both the tablet and the mobile phone linked to my laptop so that everything I do when I'm outside the lab gets automatically updated in my laptop. This is my second online course and when use the Internet I usually have a look at the national news, look for scientific papers and information regarding my current project of study.