Tips to evaluate and select websites for your academic work

Do you trust all the websites you visit? Are they reliable or not? It is highly important to be aware of certain aspects to analyze at the moment of looking for information online.
After a detailed analysis we did of two useful websites for teachers (http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish and http://www.eslkidstuff.com/) we consider that among the criteria the British Council suggests to follow when selecting websites, there are four of them which are the most important ones (images taken from eslkidstuff website):

1.  Reliability: it refers to the authors of the websites. Information about who they are, what they do, their experiences and a way to get in contact with them. This information will tell you how serious and reliable the web could be.
   
2.  Currency: up-to-date information is a key factor when evaluating a website. Looking for dates when any new link or content was uploaded will make sure you are working with the latest information.
   
3.   Clarity: the information presented should be clear. The texts should be legible and well formatted for easy reading and graphics have to be related to them.  There should not be mistakes in spelling and word usage. This will tell you that authors pay attention to the texts or any other written or spoken information they share in the website.
   
4.  Purpose: if you want a web page with an educational purpose, look for those which make an explicit reference to it and evaluate if the content is coherent with it.
   

Hoaxes present a major challenge for evaluating information of websites so you have to be very careful!

We hope these tips help you to avoid using fake web sites.

Camila and Ma. Laura

The Challenge of facing "native speakers" of the digital language

From www.smokingcoolcat.blogspot.com.ar

We think that teachers have to be aware of the challenge that Marc Prensky states as the biggest problem that education has to face nowadays: "Our  digital Immigrants instructors, who speak an outdated language (that of the pre-digital age), are struggling to teach a population that speaks an entirely new language". (If you want to read the article, click here).

It is a challenge because we are identified more with the concept of Digital Immigrants than with that of Digital Natives. We were taught at school using traditional books, diskettes, we listened to cassettes and CD's; whereas today, students are accustomed to using digital technology to learn, such as, computers, mobile phones, tablets, i-pads, e-books, and so on.

Among the characteristics that Prensky gives of Digital Natives are: “those who

From http://noticiascambridgeenglish.org

are used to receiving information really fast; those who like to parallel process and multi-task; they prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite; they prefer games to serious work”. As regards the two last descriptions we partially agree with the author. It is probably certain that they prefer pictures rather than texts but it’s important that we encourage them not only to work with visual aids but also with more demanding activities, such as, reading a text, producing a piece of writing on their own, doing reading comprehension activities so as to make their cognitive system activate and work productively. On the other hand, it is likely that they enjoy more playing games than doing some of the tasks previously mentioned, but our role as teachers is to show them that other kind of activities can be done and that they can be as fun as playing a game! We should also teach them that learning is not only about having fun but also that serious work can be an interesting and pleasurable process which they will find totally rewarding. 

From http://www.thelanguagetrainingco.com/

As regards methodology, Prensky says “it does mean going faster, less step by step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things”. We think that this sounds deterministic and consider that applying a methodology with these characteristics will depend on many other factors such as what to teach, students characteristics, group characteristics, social background and so on. Methodology should be contextualized. Apart from this, we ask ourselves what is that helps students to learn? Does going faster help them to learn? Don't we need sometimes going step by step? Do any of these characteristics have a disadvantage?

Welcome!

This blog belongs to Camila Kinen and Maria Laura Fontana. Here we will share activities, ideas, productions, and thoughts in relation to the design of English teaching materials. The aims that guide us are to record our experience, to develop critical thinking or the development of a questioning attitude, to enhance professional development and self-empowerment, to enhance creativity and to foster communication with our classmates and mutual learning. We hope this blog serves us to fulfill these objectives and help others to achieve them.