Our second day...

What is this picture?
Hi again!

You worked very hard last Tuesday and nearly everyone got a brand new blog!

Yes, you were right about last week's picture. My son took it at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. Someone thought it may be the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Not bad, considering they are both made of the same material and were designed by engineers.

1. Do a search and find out the names of the engineers who designed both the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Answer these questions:

* When were they built?

* Who designed them?

* What are they made of?

* Do you know any special interesting things about these two constructions?

Write about them in your blogs. Remember: do not copy and paste text from the Internet. It is a crime called plagiarism. Write the information in your own words and put a good link to a website that will give extra information to the readers of your blog.

3. Visit your classmate's blogs and say hello in their comments.

4. Tomorrow you are going to go to the library for a tour of the facilities. Listen to the podcast with Patricia: St George College Librarian. There is a vocabulary exercise to do before the listening. It will help you understand better. Write the answers to the comprehension questions in your blog.

5. Write a post about your hometown and I will show you how to do a link to a website with information about it. We will also upload a photo (it's better to use your own photos, you can bring them in a memory stick or a CD). Today you can just write a short description. Next week you can write a longer one. As an example look at My hometown. If you don't have a computer at home, print all the texts and exercises now.

6. I was sent a very good link for students of English by Oxford University Press. They have a section called Natural English online, with games and exercises for you to practise English in a natural contest. Check these ones about mobile phone text messages: Mobile Madness 1, Mobile Madness 2 and Mobile Madness 3. I have put a permanent link on the right hand side bar so that you can do more exercises whenever you want.

7. If you didn't participate in last week's forum, do it now.

8. Go to Time4English and in Lower Intermediate, listen to 5J Languages.

9. Also in Time4English, listen to 3A Computers. Tell Rosa if you find it too difficult or not.

Welcome to our first 2007 class!

What is this photo?

See the previous post for a clue.






Hello everyone. This is our first computer class this semester.

You will be practising your English here. Some times we will discuss topics on our forum, other times you will practise grammar online in our Time4English subscription, and you will be reading and writing in English all the time. Not only that, you will be practising your listening through our podcast blog, Sydney's People Podcast, and you will be publishing your own radio programmes in our podomatic blog, Let's Talk!

You will need the following:

• Buy a pair of headphones with microphone (you don't have to spend more than $11.00-$12.00). You will find them in P.O shops , big supermarkets and computer shops.
  
• It's a good idea to bring a floppy disk or a memory stick to class, in order to save some of your work and to bring photos from home (you can also email the photos to yourself)

Don't worry if it all sounds too much. We'll learn things step by step. And the very first thing to think about is your posture when working on the computer. It's very important to sit properly and at a good distance from the computer. So let's start work:

1. Read this information about Computer Health. Click on all the links (Stretches, Postures, Consequences)
2. Do the Quiz.
3. Today we will have a look at what a blog is. Search the net for a definition (Google, Ask Jeeves, Alltheweb search). An example of a class blog is the one my previous class had, Our class 2006. Spend some minutes exploring it and you will get an idea of what we will be doing on Tuesdays. Make sure you visit some of the student blogs on the right hand side.
   
4. Your main teacher is Andrew, whom you met yesterday. Listen to this Sydney's People Podcast about him:Andrew: Nut & Num .
5. Go to the forum and answer today's topic. You will need a username and password. Ask me for it.
6. Now let's got going and create your own blogs. You will need an email address. If you don't have one, let me know and I'll help you get one.
7. Tomorrow is St Valentine's Day. If you wnat to know more about it, visit this post I wrote for previous studetns, St Valentine's Day.
   

Have fun!

Welcome to Our Class 2007

Happy 2007 to everyone!

I'm still a bit jet-lagged from our trip to Spain. We only got back on Friday after spending nearly 4 weeks in Spain and three wonderful days in Paris.

We had unusually warm weather at first (global warming!) but one day towards the end of our stay we woke up to a Huesca in snow.

The pictures with the snow are views from my parents' balcony. You should be able to know what the lit up tower is!

Have a look at the slide show and see if you can guess which photos are from Spain (Huesca, Salamanca, Pamplona and San Sebastian) and which ones are from Paris.

Does anyone know the name of the sweet stick coming up from a thick chocolate cup? Yum!


BubbleShare

URLs for Hidden Web

Thanks to Wendy Zammit for passing on this information:

URLs for Hidden Web Presentation: Thursday 20 October 2005
by Tessa Bachmayer Teaching Librarian SIT Ultimo.

• Ask.com Search engine : A search engine that not only gives a list of relevant results, but also suggestions to narrow your search and lists of link collections.

• Mooter Web search:An Australian search engine that clusters results visually

• Cheatsheet: Summary of how to search using Google

• Thumbshots: A great teaching tool for showing the need to use more than one search engine. (Only accessible with Internet Explorer)

• Clusty: Organises results into categories that are intelligently selected from the words and phrases used in the original search query.

• Jux2: Combines the search results of Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, highlighting the overlap and differences between them.
  

• Rythospital: Artist Virgil Wong, has created a glossy genuine looking scientific site where all the information is fictitious. Great for teaching the critical evaluation of internet sites.

• Whois Lookup: Find out who runs a particular website, where it is hosted and what others say about it (great for detecting the authenticity of a site).

• Alexa: Discover incredible details about traffic to any website

• Sosig:UK Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) to high quality academic information in the social sciences, business and law

• Infomine:A collection of links to important university level research and educational tools on the Internet.

• Teoma: To find databases for a particular subject (say science) go to and type in science database.

• Librarians' Index A database of excellent sites selected by librarians in California.

• Completeplanet: Discover over 70,000+ searchable databases and specialty search engines.

• Noodletools: Which is the best search engine for my needs? How do I cite internet sources?

• Webbrain: Your search term became the focus of lines that lead to related areas, allowing you to move across the directory quickly and easily

• Become: Search engine with a large index of material related to shopping, such as buying guides, reviews, articles, specifications, forums, merchants.

• Ingenta : A comprehensive collection of academic and professional publications (mostly for a fee, but some free ones too)

Marta's guessing efforts

The following are Marta's blog entries and emails that she sent me when she was trying to guess the country in the slide show.

March 17, 2007 8:50 PM megabyt (Marta in comments)said...

Hello Rosa
Marta wrote this, could you see my blog, today is sunday 18th. I read and saw many photos around the world in internet. Ihave many photos similars and same information.I think the country in the picture is Cuba. Is it?....

Tuesday, 20 March 2007 8:19 PM
I'm at it again, but I give up! I have been reading all the history of Colon and it was very interesting and the most interesting photo for me was
the sculture with the fort behing. I think it is the Fort San Cristobal in the old City of San Juan in Puerto Rico.
http://escape.topuertorico.com/postcard/scristobal.shtml
The boots are a sculpture dedicated to the discoverer of the country, Colon. So it is the streets of old San Juan in Puerto Rico .
History tells us of the arrival of slaves, first to that country and then to the U.S.A.
for that reason you find the lady with the fruit in the head and she is black. Hopefully this is it this time.
We'll see each other again.

Wednesday, 21 March 2007 6:36 PM

The last link to Colon is Panama: its capital is Colon and I'm sending you link with the streets of the city of Panama, very similar to the one in your brother's photo and with balconies and the Cathedral identical.

http://www.galenfrysinger.com/panama_city.htm

Will it be it?....Thank you very much. I had a great time!

Wednesday, 21 March 2007 12:13 AM

I didn't give up. I've put my children to sleep and I travelled through the internet again. I found one photo with the cathedral with the same street and balconies and the people too. I think it's the City Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

http://rsta.pucmm.edu.do/Ciudad_Colonial/galeria.htm

That is the link to the photos, hopefully it has many names in Spanish and a few stories of the natives +
the races which are the same to the ones that you mention in the email.

I am going to sleep.

Wednesday, 21 March 2007 9:58 AM In comments

Marta wrote this, I was all the night with Cristobal Colon in my dreams....jajaja

Really?...yes. Today I found the link with the name Colon is the money in Costa Rica, the women in the street has a skirt with colors red blouse yellow and hat red same flag colors.

I think the Country is Costa Rica

See you soon

Friday, 23 March 2007 8:16 AM

I want to tell you that I found wich country it is. It is Colombia and the Capital City is Cartagena. The fort is Saint Philips of Barajas in the Cartagena of the Indians ....

Well, I hope to have found it this time.

I will wait for your answer. Thank you,
Marta.

Sunday March 25th, 2007 I found the Country!
I found the Country, it is Colombia. It was difficult for me, I spent many days and nights reading and researching to resolve this riddle. The most important photograph for me was the sculpture with the fortress behind it. During my search I thought that the first clue was with the cathedral in the city, I found a similar place called Capitol of Havana which also has a fortress. But Rosa suggested to read the Histories of Cristobal Colon, my second clue was in the name of the discoverer of America (Cristobal Colon ). I found San Cristóbal City in Dominican Republic, San Cristóbal Fortress in Puerto Rico, Colon City in Panama and in Costa Rica the currency is the Colon. I sent many emails to Rosa with my possibilities. When I was about to give up she suggested to read again the path that Colon did. I rested for one day and continued my journey, again I thought in the name that Colon gave the first city "Las Indias" with that in mind I did my searching and found Cartagena Las Indias in Colombia

Visit her blog, BRAiN, where she's posted very good links.

Semeste 1 2009 students

Kashpia
Patcharin
Bee
Jean
Nunung
Sunita
Andrea
Desire
Lina
Igor
Mitu
Mouri
Asha
Yun
Rana
Aleya
Jovanna
Diana
Wang
Rita
Mercedes
Veena
Dina
Alan

For Teachers

Rosa's Social Software Web 2

ATESOL pp on ESOL blogging & podcasting

Bloglines

Guidelines for using Blogs & wikis

Dekita

clc community

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Leigh's Wiki

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URLs for Hidden Web

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