Global Citizenship

Global citizenship is a project of the British Council under the program of Connected Classrooms. The project is aimed at  fostering the thinking and facilitating the transformation of citizen in school systems in different prats of the world to Global Citizen.

Though the concept of Global Citizenship has been there for long time, such kind of organised and purposeful practice of facilitating the change in the education system of schools in some selected countries involved in the project.

The major contents of the training include:

• Exploring Global Citizenship 
• Intercultural practice 
• International Learning
• Partnership Journey

The first step I involved myself was in securing certificates in all the online courses managed by University of London, College of Education.



The second step in the procedure that I involved myself in this project was in taking part in the validation training that took place in Addis Ababa.

The last three stages of Balanced Scorecard System are:

Automation
Cascading and
Evaluation of the system

The the case of automation, organizations need to consider the relevance of using softwares that enable registration and monitoring results. This serves two important purposes.
1. Identify problems and help to design strategies to bring them into the right truck
2. Provide information for evaluation of performance at the end of a given period.

An importnat point to conder here is that the software we choose needs to be easy to handle and should provide relelvant information.

Cascading is all about bringing the strategic objectives of organizations to the levels of departments and individuals. It is a very esssential step where departmental and individual roles are clearly identified and responsibilites are provided. Results to be acheived at all levels need to be made crystal clear to everyone at every level at this stage so as to issure success.

Evalaution of a Balanced Scorecard implemented in an organization needs to be given a great attention. Sources confirm that the first year of implementation of BSC is a very critical period to put the system in place and make sure that relevant pitfalls are properly addressed. For this, strategies need to be disigned to conduct the evalaution of the BSC system all along for development purpose.

So, what are you thinking about improving the performance of your organization?
Give it a try and make the most out of BSC.

Good Luck
Getachew Melaku
Consultant in Perforamnce Management and Planning

What is Job Performance?

What is Performance Management these days in Businesses and Public Sectors.

Is it all about going to work everyday, accomplishing your daily duties, and reporting that you performed what is given to you through your JD?

I think this definition of Performance Management has now expired. One need to consider the RESULT from the activities one is performing and relate it to the strategic objectives of the department that he is working and later to the organizational strategic objectives. For this we need to learn more about how to do things.

Balanced Scorecard is one of the performance management tools that help us achieve what we aspire in our daily life and job responsibilities as mentioned above.

Balance Scorecard is Management, Measurement and Communication tool.

1. Strategic review of organizational capacity and customer objectives
2. Design strategic themes
3. Design strategic Objectives
4. Map your objectives
5. Identify the measures and place targets of your objectives
6. Design strategic Initiatives to facilitate implementation of your Objectives 

learn more about it form me.

Thank You

What happened to facebook page?

Can Somebody tell me what happened to my facebook account?

Is there anyone experiencing difficulty in opening his/her facebook account? I have started seeing a message as showing in the screen case image below since 8:00 pm last night in UK time.

 Hope things will be in place soon.

Speaker Proposal for 47th AITEFL Workshop Liverpool.

1.       Ama-English: Mobile language made in Ethiopia:  A bless or disguise?

Technology is fostering the use of some languages such as English all over the world. One attribute to this is the use of technology in message exchange using computers and Mobile phones. In my presentation I would like to share the findings of my study on why some people use Ama-English rather than pure Amharic (Ethiopic) or English to communicate.

2.     New experience in using technology: Classrooms in Ethiopian

Using technological as a tool of instruction in Ethiopian classrooms is rare. The purpose of my presentation is to evaluate the perception of students towards their experience in using Web-based lessons (WebQuest). Analysis of the type and level of concern in using the tool will be evaluated and lessons learned will shared.

Summary

Understanding students’ perception towards the technological tools that are used in classrooms is a very important issue so as to guide the teaching learning process effectively. In my presentation, I will try to show the perception of students towards the use of WebQuest as a tool of instruction for the first time in their context. The presentation has the following important steps that are based on the implementation and documentation of the experience. The first steps will be to show the background experience of students in using Web-based lessons, specifically WebQuest lessons. Baseline survey data will be used for this purpose. On the second step, I will review the experience of students towards the WebQuest lesson that they will work on. The WebQuest lessons for this purpose will be designed based on the contents in the syllabus of their English language subject. The result of the analysis of the data collected based on the students experience in the WebQuest lesson will be presented on the third stage. This mainly focuses on identifying the concerns of students towards using WebQuest as a tool of instruction. Finally, lessons derived from using WebQuest as a tool of instruction will be identified and communicated. The contribution of the tool towards helping learners to achieve their educational objectives will be given greater attention in this part.

The first draft of my dissertation is completed. Thank God!!!

Title: Affordances of WebQuest: The perception of students in the case of the Ethiopian Civil Service University.

The major finding was that WebQuest is found to be a potential instructional tool for the course study skills. it is found out that WebQuest can facilitate inquiry based learning, that is often missing in the education system I experienced. Students however are skeptical about the physical situation in relation to resources supply and skills of managing the tool in their specific context.

full copy to be released soon.

Thank you 

Please read articles form the following links to learn more about WebQuest.

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtpe20

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utef20

http://questgarden.com/

Training days of the week

It seems that I missed class once more. I have attended two training sessions organised by student career center of the university of worwick this week. The first training on speed reading was on Tuesday June 12, 2012. The second training was on working with team on today, June 13 , 2012.

Speed reading

The training has made me understand two issues. the frist issue is about the perception of speed reading. It seems clear that speed reading and skills of reading overlap. However, this training clarified the extent of the overlap. Speed reading is both context based and relative to other important eading goals such as level of comprehension and success in reading at a given stage. The second point is about the techniquies to improve speed reading. Five points were discussed as techniques and some of them were practiced in th training session. I need to deal with them in detail in my next post.

Working with team

The training was focusing on identifying characteristics of individuals based on their role in group work. First, we discussed the characterisitcs of successful teams based on our experiences of team work. Following that we were handed back with the Belbin team role report result and made a lively discussion on our dominant charactersitics as team roles based on the belbin report and potential to develop othe roles. It was an interesting opportunity where I realised that recognising team roals can be an essential step towards facilitating success in team work.

See you soon in further detail.

getachew

June  13, 2012

Review of an Article

Apps

Just in a rush to today.
Are you interested in producing different multimedia tools for your calss or personal use?

This post is to introduce you to a home for several types of softwares called dvdvideosoft.com
Just type the link in your browser and you will find the site.

Under the page you will find different tools that can help you creat, convert and produce different multimedia documents. let me share you what I did.

I wanted to upload MP3 running music on my mobile phone. Because my mobile phone can only take that format. The other problem was that I was able to find an appropriate music from you tube. My real search for a tool emerged then. I wanted a tool to concert the you tube videos I got to MP3 format.

The 'FREESTUDIO' helped me to convert the you tube videos into mp3 format and I uploaded it on my phone. I am using the music when I jog.

However, I am thinking about the further possible potential of the tool to help me for my calss. The operation is very simple and short.

when you open the FREESTUDIO' you will see the following page

You can copy and paste the you tube video link into the given space at the center of the box marked 'copy a you tube video link and paste it here'.

you can chose the types of mp3 you want from the cursor given in the dialogue box marked 'Quality'. Finally you can run the conversion by clicking the 'edit' button. Within a sort period of time you will find your mp3 document.
Important features
1. squised size
2. different options of mp3 documents
3. instantly downloadable to any apps

Give it a try and lets talk about it more
good luck

April, 2012

My interview on IATEFL conference, 2012

My interview on IATEFL Conference,

PP Project Presentation

Nasa Science Cast. In interesting source of listening text

Once we move from consumers of ICT products to contributors to it due to web 2.0, the amount of materials up on web is increasing from time to time. In the mean time, the developments in technology are increasing rapidly to enable us sharing between and among ourselves.

The development  in the area of producing audio and video materials is now amazing due to podcasting and vodcasting.  It is now possible to share large number of files fast. It is also possible to transfer those files from one source to another.

Podcast is the focus of this post. Many things has been said about podast.This is just to pause a question in the minds of my readres about how can we use such large and varied sources to facilitate teaching learning.

Podcast records avilable free online are interesting sources of educationl materials for teaching  English language. The link below is what I  have come across recently. I will come to comment on the possible ways to use this and other sources. For now I would like to invite you to have alook at the link and think what we can do together.

Mesmerising February Evenings

See you soon

A good resource for beginner learners

It is obvious that language teaching and learning is becoming a hot issue in the education systems of different countries. Now I am being convinced that it is much more influential than I imagined. I have one interesting reason to come to this conclusion. I am appreciating the values of language teaching ICT tools produced more than any time now in my study and reading at Warwick. This informs me the value that language teaching and learning is being given.  

In this post, I would like to introduce ‘language guide .Org ’ website. The first things that come to my mind are my children. My first child is already in kindergarten. She is struggling to identify letters. It always surprises me that she can easily identify a capital letter and a small letter if it is associated with the picture that he studied with at school. Therefore, I decided to help her study using practice books that have images and letters. Having come across with language. Org English, one more thing comes to my mind. This can help my child more than I can imagine synchronising all written, pictures and spoken forms.  

What is Language guide.org?

Language guide.org is a website that can help learners to improve their English language vocabulary skills. It is designed in a very simple way so that it can help learners acquire the basic skills. One can use the  link http://www.languageguide.org/ to find the page of the website.

Features

The most essential feature of language guide.org is that it has vocabulary in written, pictures and spoken forms synchronised. Such multimodal presentation helps learners to acquire what they have gone through faster.

How can teachers use?

Language Guide. Org is an ideal source of lesson for early grade language education. Parents can also use it at home to help their children. It is really a fun for children to learn from the website.

The following lesson is designed for children of age seven based on the input form language guide.org. I will use the PPP model of lesson production. This is just to demonstrate what we can do with the website. Therefore, the lesson plan may not be complete or copy of what we often do for our classes

Lesson Plan

Objective

At the end of this lesson the students will be able to

1.       Identify body parts above our neck.

2.       Pronounce the words properly

3.       Write the words in correct spelling

Introduction

In this part students are asked to identify their body parts especially the ones above their neck. Then they are asked to identify the body parts of a friend next to them.

N.B. Teacher need to be very careful on facilitating the second exercises if there is a students with some kind of disability.

Presentation

We can present the body parts above the neck in pictures. I suggest the use of students’ L1 at this stage

Head                                     chicks

Hair                                       chin

Ears                                        forehead

Nose                                     nostrils

Mouth                                  teeth

Eyes                                       eyebrow

Teacher can use the pictures widely at this level to help students associate the words with the pictures

Practice

We can use the resources form languageguide.org at this specific point. If the teachers are not native speaker of the language, the resource from Language Guide.org has significant contribution. The following link for Language Guide.org can help learners to practice the body parts in this lesson. Teachers can use both the American and British version to help students practice based on their judgement.

Teachers can also decide on the procedure and type of practices based on their real context. However, practice sessions need to be involving and accuracy focused.

http://www.languageguide.org/english-uk/vocabulary/face/

Production

At this stage teachers can make two choices. The first choice could be to get back to their original pictures and ask students to elicit each part. The second part could be to keep on using the resources on Languagegide.org.

However, teachers need to be very considerate to give enough amount of time at this stage. They also need to think about the variety of ways to make the production interesting and engaging.

Please give it a try and see what you can improve

Good luck.

Now I have one more choice to facilitate my trainings

In my job as a consultant at the Ethiopian Civil Service University, I conduct trainings. It is customary for me to ask participants of the trainings to brainstorm on issues. I often ask participants think about the issues by themselves and write whatever comes to their mind on a piece of coloured post-it-note papers and post it on the wall. Then I ask participants to move around and try to sort out similar ideas and put them in their categories. This is often a successful activity to encourage participants to contribute. It is mainly encourages when training participants have some sort of power relationship. I am often interested on the idea not who said it.

It is still possible to use this idea successfully even if there is no question of anonymity. Wallwisher is an ICT tool that reminded me all these things. Now I can do all those things using a computer program.

In this article I would like to share about what wallwisher is, how can we use it in our classroom and out of class activities and what are its limitations.

What is Wallwicher?

Wallwisher is an ICT tool that enable as to help us communicate and collaborate in doing some activities. One can come up with an issue to discuss or brainstorm and invite others to contribute even if they are far away. Therefore, individuals con contribute using wallwisher.

The picture above shows the page of wallwisher when you inter using google search or writing wallwisher in the URL of your browser. You need to register so as to enable you produce an account that enable you to save what you do. Once you have your password you can use your wall for your activities.

 

The actual wall you collaborate with others is as shown in the picture above. Participants can add written texts up to 160 characters, pictures and vireos. When one enters a document the facilitator of the discussion can click ok and help others share it right away. It is also possible for one to comment on what others written of posted. I have started a discussion on what are the causes of higher number of road accidents in Ethiopia. You can refer to the post in this blog how issues are posted up.

What purpose can it serve?

I found it as an exciting tool to conduct trainings that I used to facilitate. However, it is still possible to use for teaching inside and outside classroom. Classroom at higher education institutions can be facilitated. It is still possible to use it for online tutorial on distance and encouraging participations in virtual classes.

The two important pedagogical justifications behind using wallwisher are to encourage leaners participation and facilitate student cantered discussions. Using wallwisher, we can specifically encourage shy learners to contribute and develop confidence. In addition to this, teachers and trainers can see the perceptions of the learners or training participants and adjust their discussion and support based on that. Therefore, wallwisher is an important tool for teachers and students.

Teachers can also encourage students to use the tool while they are at home or with students in other schools

Writing exercises are possible based on ideas contributed form students in classrooms. We can share the points we discussed using wallwisher. Therefore, it creates a chance for other to learn from us.

 

What are its limitations?

Wallwisher has limited characters (160) to use give written messages. Therefore, this may limit the contributions of individuals. I believe that it is an important variety for our classes or training sessions.

Give it a try and see waht you can do more with it.

Wallwisher post

A Listening Text for WebQuest Lesson

Voice Recorder >>

Sound Cloud

Video message exchange and language teaching

Technological advancement is changing our world and our way of life since long time. One of the areas of development with significant change is communication, especially exchange of personal messages. Mobile phone and email services are relatively recent developments I witnessed. It has also been possible to leave voice mail on phone since quite recently.  Now I am experiencing video mail. Mailvu is the ICT tool that I came across this time from my ICT in ELT class.  This is a technology that can enable us to send video message like we send written email messages.

No one doubt that the first possible use of such technological development could be for personal and business communication. However, I want to explore the possible ways that we can use Mailvu in the education sector, especially in teaching and learning of English language.

As usual, I will consider three issues in this article for my blog. The first is describing Mailvu. Following that I will try to share what I think about using Mailvu for teaching English language. Finally, I will try to show some possible limitations of the tool.

What is it?

Mailvu is an ICT tool just like the familiar internet service logos that we know such as YAHOO OR GAMIL, OR HOTMAIL or others. One thing different is that it enables to send video recorded messages than the customary written document or written document with attached videos.

 How can we use it to teach English language?

We often ask students to conduct different activities that can help them to improve their knowledge and skills of the target language. One of this is to ask them to engage in real life communication. We can use Mailvu to help students to record their real language use while communicating with others. For example we, can ask students to send a message to their friends about their project, or send a message to their parents about what they want for a new year. Students can record and see how they are working on their language. We can have different activities at different levels. Mailvu is simple to record sand send. What mailvu add more than simple recording of activities is that friends can exchange messages and comment each other’s works.

The following videos show my practice for a job interview and the comments my friend gave on my language use. 

Self Introduction for a job

Comment of a friend on language use

Limitations

The first limitation that I observe in mailvu is unidirectional. However, as I often mention, if it can serve as a variety in our lesson, we can say that it is worth using it for classroom purposes.

It is always a pleasure to see creative ways of using an ICT tool and share with others. Please give mailu a try and see what it can bring for you.

cheers

A teacher can be a movie maker

Dvolver is an ICT tool that I came across in my fifth week work on my course ICT in ELT. It is simple and fantastic tool to make some kind of short animated kind of movies that can help teachers to supplement their lessons.

Now I become a movie maker!!! That is of course the important quality of a teacher. We have students from different background with different experiences in life. They also have different learning styles and strategies. Some enjoy visual learning, others prefer touching and practicing, still others are fond of listening to us like a singing bird. We are there in the classroom to meet their desires in any way we can. I understand it may not be always possible. What make us different is that we often feel responsible to do that. And we always try to do that. Just because we are teachers!!

Therefore, I am not surprised if we become movie makers. In the mean time I am not undermining that movie making is a simple job that anyone can join it whenever he can and wish. Rather, this is to show the advantages brought to us through Dvolver.

There are three important issues that I would like to make in this article. First, I will try to explain what it is . Then, I will try to comment on how can we use it to supplement our lesson in teaching English language. Finally, I will try to indicate its limitations and what can we do to use it to the maximum.

What is it?

Dvolver is an ICT tool that enables us to produce simple movies. We can choose our characters and the conversation that go with it. There are physical settings and background music to choose from.  Then we enter our conversation scripts and the rest is the duty of the tool. Very simple!

Its use in teaching English Language

The first thing that came to my mind when I see through the tool was the books that I used to learn on. Those books had pictures of people who engaged in dialogue. The scripts of the conversant are in boxes or circle and directed to the speaking characters using arrows. They often attract me. Dvolver can add one more feature to this practice by making it more natural like movies.

I can think of some exercises using Dvolver now. The first is grammar exercise. We can show students movies with grammar items included in the dialogues. We can also do the same thing to teach vocabulary items.  Furthermore, the activity may proceed as a home work. We can ask our students to prepare movies using language items that we taught in classroom.

It just needs the creativity of the teachers. Please give it a try. We can make a variety in our presentation at least. Look at the following move I did to teach past tense forms.

Example Dvolver lesson

Some limitations

I observed some limitations of Devolver. First, it is limited to types of settings, characters and background music to choose. In relation to that, it allows only limited number of script. It seems that Dvolver may not be an interesting tool to use at intermediate or advance level. However, we can creatively use it at lower level to make our lesson interactive.

Have a nice try

Once again about Jing

It is my third time to hear about the screen capture software called Jing. This time with more excitement and thinking about how can it be used best in language teaching contexts.

Jing has an amazing feature that can help one to capture what he does on his screen. It is also clear that we do a lot of things on our desktop or laptop screen. Therefore, how about sharing all those relevant things that we do on our screen with other fellow professionals?

If we are ready to help, I think Jing can help us.

How to use Jing?

We can download the free program using google search. Then we see the shining sun like bar often on top of our screen. Then we are ready to use it.

Jing can allow us to record up to 5 minute for free. We love free!!!!!!

The following like has video to show us how can we use jing. Complements to the generosity of Russell Stannard once again  http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/Jing/index.html

Once we save our record. We only need to right click and pest a link. That is our video. The next step is to send it to whomever we want.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy

 Wait a minute, I remember something. Jing helped us solve a problem while working another ICT input in my class called wordle. Having done a lot of things on wordle, we were not sure how can we post it to our blogs. A friend from class suggested Jing. Wow. That could be possible. Thank you Max!

Just do whatever you do and when it is time to share it with other from your screen Jing can be used.

How can we use Jing in language classroom?

The idea of giving and getting feedback is a big issue that I better wait to hear form senior people work on it such as Russell. However, I would like to make some comments on how can Jing be used in language classrooms. Jing can help as synchronise pictures and audio resources together. Therefore, we can produce a listening exercise. It can also have note taking activity involved with it.

Furthermore, we can integrate speaking and writing exercises.  We can encourage students to use Jing to record their speaking practice and exchange to each other for comments. The ease in exchanging the records between students makes Jing preferable.

Finally, it is often important to find out if there are other ICT inputs with similar or related function. This helps to figure out the special advantage of one over the other and efficiently use the existing resources.

Is this a picture or a pile of words?

This is the first question that I asked myself when I first see a book that has cover picture made of word cloud. I know that pictures on covers of books are often done with the at most care to communicate the message of the book. As a result it is common to see names of people who did that in the inside or outside cover of books (cover picture by _____). So what is the value of this word cloud as cover picture here? After I got a chance to see how word cloud is done using the ICT tools and especially after we had a discussion in the classroom about its contribution in language teaching and learning, I realised now two important things. The first thing is that I was not critical about what the words in the cloud represent. The second is that I have never imagined that such practice can be used for further educational purpose, especially English Language Education.

Wordle is one of the ICT tools that can help as do such word cloud. As usual, let me introduce what it is, how can it be used in English language teaching and what are the features that can be considered while preparing to use it in classroom.

What is Wordle?

As I mentioned earlier, wordle is an ICT tool to make word cloud for different purposes.  The word cloud often has words with different font size and colour the most frequent word/s have larger size and the size of the font of the words goes smaller as the words become less frequent.  The procedure to create Wordle document is very simple and short. The following video shows you how you can easily create your wordle document.

http://screencast.com/t/aqcw1ti2

What is the use of Wordle in English language teaching?

The most important question for this short article is what purpose wordle serves in teaching English language. In my perception wordle can be used for different purposes while teaching English language. At a higher education level especially at the stage where collocation of words is discussed. The result from analysing a written text can show us preliminary information about word frequency of the text. This however is very elementary level information. In the document prepared above we can see that the words presentation, presentations and Saturday, are used frequently.

In addition to, this we can produce different kinds of lessons for teaching English language. I will try to discuss how can we use such documents to teach vocabulary, writing and speaking.

We can ask our students to work on matching words with synonyms

We can also facilitate a reconstruction of a paragraph based on the jumbled sentences that we have produced from it using worlde. The following picture shows how to do that.

We can ask students to guess and speak or write about what is the main issue of the wordle document. They can use the words given as hint. It can facilitate collaboration and group dynamic while students try to make meaning out of the words and try to visualise the words written in small font size. We can consider the fun that can lessons create as a tip for our class as well.

Things to be considered

 Wordle is just a single ICT tool. It is obvious that it cannot help us to prepare our lessons all the time and so does any other ICT tool. However, we can think of which tool can help us produce what kind of lesson. This is often to the decision of the teacher. In addition to this, there is one limitation of wordle as we can see in the jumbled sentences exercise above. In the exercise, the students are expected to figure out each word in the sentences so as to understand the complete meaning. This could be time consuming.

It is better give it a try and see what can we improve about it.

Good Luck

Story using Bubblr

How about 'Bubblr'?

The advantage of using multimedia resources to present our lesson is well discussed. However, my practice as a teacher of English as a foreign language informs me that I often ignore such relevant aspect of pedagogy. Of course one reason for such ignorance is the lack of access and expertly in suing resources available.

Situations are changing now. There are user friendly ICT and multimedia tools out there that can really make difference in English language teaching and learning. Using multimedia  resources in our presentations need to be a matter of necessity than option. We are lucky that there are thousands of them out there.

In this post I would like to share about ‘Bubblr’, a simple but a very exciting ICT tool that can help us design interesting lesson for our classes.  As usual, I will discuss on what is it? How can we use it in our language teaching and what are the issues that we need to consider to make the best use of it.

What is Bubblr?

Bubblr is a program that is produced by a company called Pimpampum.com. The company of course has other similar products. Bubblr helps to create a document that has series of images selected form the repository such as fliker. It has very simple and user friendly steps to create. Russell Stannared’s http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/newBubblr/index.html   video can show as how can we use to build our bubbler document.

This is the page that we see when we open the program.

What is its benefit for teaching English language?

As I mentioned earlier multimodal classroom inputs facilitate teaching learning in different ways. The first thing is that we create variety in classroom presentations. This facilitates the learning of students of different learning preferences. Bubblr enables us to display pictures in sequence and insert some written texts using the models of bubble given at the bottom of the program. Hence, leaners get advantage to facilitate their understanding.

We can think of different lessons based on the language item that we are interested to teach and the level of our students. At the lower level vocabulary practice and construction of simple sentences are ideal practices using bubblr. We can adapt similar decisions to the intermediate and advanced level. For example, we can integrate practice of the four language skills at intermediate level. Having presented a sequence of pictures we can ask students to make a story out of it. Then after, we can go on asking students to produce written version of that story. Bear in mind that while doing the above activities, students are also practicing listening and reading.

How can use the best out of Bubblr?

Planning any lesson require the teacher to consider the level of the students and the relevance of the lesson at that level. This are also the most important skills that teachers are trained to practice. As I mentioned earlier it is possible to use bubblr teach present our lesson for learners at different levels. The other important point to make best use of bubblr is to work on the integration of the pictures and the texts that we insert using the bubble diagram.

You can view from my blog what I did using bubblr to create a simple promotional note.

Good luck in using bubblr and
Good Day

Something more than search engine for classroom

My calssmet who has the new Iphone 4 S showed me an aminzing feature of it. Later, I also saw the feature on TV ad. The phone has a feature called siri. I can say that it literally can talk to you. It provides information about what you ask. We tried to inquire about a lot of things such as the capital city of my country, the current prime minister and other questions. See the following dialogue between myself and the phone. 

Me: I love you

I Phine 4 S: But I respect you

Me: Why don’t you love me back?

I Phone 4 S: I am not allowed to

Is that not exciting??!!!!!!!!! It of course reminded me the film called I Robot, Will Smith.

I am thinking about how can we use such resources in supplementing our practice of teaching and learning.

 I am convinsed that things that we read on science fiction novels and watch on movies will come to be reality. How fantastic is technology. It is really making life easy.

In my ICT in ELT class I came across a website aclled Wolframe Alpha. I have see that it is a much more practical help for my question above, helping teaching and learning.

Let me discuss briefly what Wolframe Alpha is and comment on how can we use it in supplementing teaching and learning in general and Engliah language teaching and learning in particular.

Wolframe Alpha is like a search webiste that provide you quick information. You can inquire the result of simple arthemetics or factual information or more complecated economic and chemical information. The website provides you reasonably reliable answer. Just type your inquiry and press enter button. It even goes to th extent of giving you possible answers if your questions are mis typed.

What does it has for teachers of Englaih Language?

The two things that come to my mind are Task Based Language Learning and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). I know that both are engaging for the learners. In the case of the later, we can teach students about a subject matter and use the opportunity to help them development their language skills in that aspect. Hence, Wolfram Alpha can be a source of relevant information for the activities for our students. In the case of the former, We can provide students tasks such as finding facts and figures and reporting. As mentioned earlier, Wolframe Aplha can also be a reliable source of information for students. The other aspect of important input from Wolfram Alpha is that it can provide cooked information that facilitate communication and effective use of the target language.

What can we do to make the best use of it?

Wolframe Alpha  has some special characteristis compaired to other search engines. It provides readily available and well cooked information that the user can work on. Therefore, if the student knows exactly what to inquire, she can get the infromation. The level of the learner often determines the type of information that she inquires. This enables saving time of the learner. Teachers can facilitate the use of the wesite to get infromation. However,  they need to be very confident about how far students can use them to help their own learning.