Qual foi seu primeiro contacto com a língua escrita?

Do you remember your first encounter with letters?  Think back.  To me it happened when I was seven years old, first grade with no pre-school experience! What about you?

Sejam Bem-Vindos

Faça seus comentários a respeito desta idéia.  Faça perguntas também, se for o caso.  O que é um Dialogue Journal? O que é um Dialogue Journal sobre o ensino e aprendizagem do ingles em Angola? O que isso significa para voce? 

For Potential New Blog Readers

This blog was created to fulfill one of the 23 tasks I had to accomplish as part of a social media course I took called “23 Things.” 

Well, I am done with the course, which I really enjoyed, so now I can invite you to be part of this blog.  I would like to go back to the idea of creating an Angola Dialogue Journal for teachers and students of English, a place where they can share their thoughts about teaching and learning in general.  Your comments will be the entries of this journal.  You can write in your own language if you wish.  Let the writing begin!

Thing 17: Books 2.0

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

This article is more about the how the Net is changing the way we think by changing the way we read.  I thought this could only happen with new generation and was surprised to know that it can still happen with people like me (in my 40’s!) due to the plasticity of our brains.  According to this article our brains get so used to the immediate finding of information - by scanning titles and subtitles, moving our eyes vertically on the pages of the Net, finding the specific information at the touch of a bottom - that we lose the concentration we need when faced with a dense reading of a book.

The reading researcher, Maryanne Wolf, argues that deep reading is indistinguishable from deep thinking.  If the Net is making us lose our ability of deep thinking, we should all be concerned. 

Book Program Resources

I checked LitLovers out and really enjoyed it.  I happen to be participating in a book club for the first time and found the site really helpful.

eBooks

I’ve recently got a Kindle as a gift and I love it!  Being away from the US without APO services makes ordering books a long wait and a Kindle is definitely a solution.  What I absolute love about Kindles is that you can click on a word to search for its meaning in a dictionary – this is a fantastic tool for a second language learner. 

I did not know about Project Gutenberg so I was delighted to search through their shelves and learn about all the free possibilities! The challenge is to find time to read them all!

Audio Books

LibriVox – I browsed and was impressed with the site.  This might be wonderful for children with learning disabilities, reading difficulties.

Visual Bookshelf

I know have Visual Bookshelf on my Facebook and I love it!  I was surprised to see some of my friends there and learned about their reading preferences, exchange insights about a given book – real cool and useful.

Thing 23: Virtual Worlds

Maybe public diplomacy could use a virtual world to instruct people about PAS main programs.  We could have a whole virtual English program for students and teachers, given that the quality of English instruction in Angola is not ideal – we could even use insights from our English Fellows and Specialists to create lesson plans and interactive activities.  But I have to say, the whole virtual world idea is still a bit above my head.  I cannot really think about a virtual experience being richer than the real life experience.  Perhaps the virtual world could prep audiences to certain real life environment, such as teaching English, or using the library in places where these skills are not common practice, like here in Africa.  But then, how can you even introduce a virtual world when technology is not common place either?

Thing 22: The Mobile Web

 I could not open any .gov site.  I tried to open our site, America.gov but nothing worked.  I experienced with Amazon and google and it was all right.  I noticed you cannot use enter to initiate a search but click the bottom search.  Google.com came up in German and I could not change to English.  Smart phones in Angola are not common.  I used a smart phone to search for a book title when shopping for the holidays in the US – we were in the car and it was so helpful to find the book on amazon (I did not know the correct title) and found it in the nearest bookstore to complete a last minute task!  I loved it.  My husband recently bought an Ipod and he uses Skype from it to talk to our family in the US.  He also checks the news, google, email – but he can only use it in the house, where we have wireless  internet service.  He can download some news articles and read them later, if he chooses to. 

I can see Web-enabled phones being used in classrooms, allowing kids with learning disabilities, for example, and the general population, to have access to information right away.  For PAS I can see that the location awareness feature might be a valuable tool to map outreach response when done simultaneously – the press coverage for presidential election, for example, which will soon happen in Angola.  

Thing 21: Short Message Service (SMS)

I could use SMS to reach out for the Angolan English teachers to let them know about workshops, resources, eventual scholarship programs, etc, but I use email instead.  You don’t have to pay for text received here but the few phone networks here are not reliable.  Yesterday we could not contact anyone by cell phone for about two hours -the mission employees rely on radios in situations like that.  Cell phones are common in Angola more so than landlines, though.  I use SMS a lot with a small number of contacts because I am afraid the use with a large number would impair my phone, which I greatly use to work (it’s an Embassy phone).