BBC THE FLATMATES

The Flatmates is a weekly online soap opera for learners of English. If you are a teacher, the resources on the page will help you to exploit the series and its materials in the classroom (lesson plans, cartoon strips and worksheets)

APARTMENT THERAPY

Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan is the co-founder of this popular new York-based home and design site. Refreshing how he can transform the dreariest place into a cosy urban oasis using his eight-step therapeutic cure.

CRAFT GUERRILLA

Love crafts' Are you for sharing your know how? Check out craft guerrillas, stop by their website, or even join them. This Christmas, make it Hand Made! So they say at the East London blog. Pop in and feel inspired for your DIY-ing. (Do IT Yourself). Do not forget the Spanish sister armies. Great Fun.

ASSESSING THE DAMAGE FROM HURRICANE SANDY

The New York Times has recently published a number of graphics on the damage from hurricane Sandy. Check out the Web for news on Oyster Creek nuclear plant in New Jersey.

MOBILE LEARNING

If you are interested on innovation, I strongly recommend 'Mobile Learning: Transforming the delivery of Education and Training', edited by Mohamed Ally in Canada (2009), AU Press, Athabasca University (also online). It contains a comprehensive view of advances, research and applications of Mobile Learning by experts from both European and American Universities. Do not miss the glossary, or the differences between e-learning and m-learning.

CITYBREAKS IN BRITAIN

Most people know about London, but aside from that they are not really sure where else to visit in Britain. Brighton is just an hour away and great for a day trip. Enjoy some fish and chips at the Victorian pier, walk along the pebble beach, and visit the Royal Pavilion. Great shopping and nightlife. At Bath, the spa town famous for its Roman baths, you can enjoy a day of pampering, or walk past the beautiful Georgian houses. It was the home of author Jane Austen.

BBC WORDMASTER

Check this game out to test your vocabulary skills. Three levels and thousands of words to practise. Use the clues if you're stuck, and remember to click listen for the right pronunciation. Great fun.

SOLAR AND HELIOSPHERIC OBSERVATORY (SOHO)

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is a joint project of international cooperation between rhe European Space Agency (ESA) and the NASA. It is currently the main source of data for weather prediction. Impressive solar storm pics.

11 NOVEMBER, REMEMBRANCE DAY

Armistice Day or Remembrance Day  is known because we wear a red poppy in memory of those who gave their lives in the two World Wars and subsequent conflicts. If you visit London, bear in mind that Poppy Day may result in road closures due to parades and special events.

FILOGLOSSIA, LEARNING GREEK AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Dodge the crowds and find your own language experience. You will be able to approach more Greeks, and find your way on your own while travelling to the country. This site could be the start. Get a handy phrasebook as well. Just in case.

GUY FAWKES DAY AND BONFIRE NIGHT

Saw a BBC documentary on Guy Fawkes. Apparently, a high percentage of young people don't have a clue about it. November, 5? Was he the bloke in 'V for Vendetta'? Is global Halloween killing local celebrations? Are they making a big thing of it while we talk ours down? What is considered to be important in culture? Fireworks? Yes, please.

HALLOWHAT?

Are you travelling to Spain for the first time in November? There are tons of local alternatives to Halloween. Spanish remember their dearly departed on All Saints' Day bringing flowers to their graves, but you may also taste a few traditional sweets, such as 'Huesos de Santo' (literally 'Saint's bones'), made of marzipan, or 'Buñuelos', quite similar to 'Churros'. If you can get to see a performance of Don Juan Tenorio to end up the day, seize the opportunity. Alcalá de Henares could be the perfect place.

WORLD SKETCHING TOUR

A Portuguese urban sketcher goes around the world to sketch whatever his eyes seize. Five continents, five years, one dream. Share his sketches and experiences and read some Portuguese.

IATE, TERMINOLOGY FOR EUROPE

The IATE open web site is the EU's inter-institutional terminology database, and since 2004, it has been used in the EU institutions and agencies for the shared management of a variety of multilingual entries. Worth visiting. 

URBAN DICTIONARY

Contemporary American slang words and phrases. It includes favourites, word of the day or tv sections. You can write your own definitions.

EDUCATIONAL COMIC STRIP

To support innovation in learning you could use MakeBeliefscomix, which generates comic strips. Do you have any ideas for using it? It encourages writing and reading in a quick and fun way. Both for literacy and ESL.

SLIDING HOUSE

London architects dRMM designed in 2009 a house with mobile walls and roof that may look like a simple barn, until you discover that it can be moved to cover or uncover parts of the dwelling. Sustainable design, both beautiful and practical. Details matter. A video worth seeing.

GREEN GUERRILLAS

In the early 1970's Green Guerrillas began rallying people in New York City to use community gardening as a tool to reclaim urban land and bring people together to solve problems in their neibourhoods. Get some information about ongoing projects.

UK GOVERNMENT CUTS AND NEO-VICTORIAN NARRATIVE

Search for a series of brief articles under the banner 'The UK in 2017' in wich the authors imagine the effects of UK government cuts. Patrick Butler's satyrical piece on social inequalities is particularly brilliant on its comparison to Dickens' writings. Gloomy prospect.

TOOLS FOR MILLENNIAL LEARNERS

Engaging the newest generation of learners, age 18 to 30, implies a shift from a teacher driven classroom, to a student-driven one. Read Allen & Swindle (2007). Explore the wide range of educational cool tools as Wordle, Screencast-o-matic, Jing, Prezi or Glogster. They will boost your creativity and enhance your writings and presentations with powerful visuals. List your top five tools.

HAIDER ACKERMANN BY TILDA SWINTON

Interview magazine is one the coolest sites from accross the Web. Since debuting his first collection in 2002, the Colombian-born Ackermann has a small but devoted tribe of followers: intellectuals, hipsters, and forward-thinking types - among them his interviewer here, the actress Tilda Swinton. Join us.

WHAT SHOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT EFSA?

CEO (Corporate Europe Observatory) publishes a new educational tool explaining some of the major problems at EFSA, the agency responsible for food safety in Europe. Pass it on.

LINGUEE

Lovers of langauages, listen up: Linguee is a translation tool combining a dictionary and a search engine with wihch you can search through bilingual texts for words and expressions. Compared to other online dictionaries, it offers a great variety of contextual translation examples, its frequency and source. SPA, GER, FRE, POR.

COUPLING UP AND DOWN

Zoe William's article on the experience of three couples over the class divide is worth reading for further debate. Comments range from bitter to hilarious. (October, 19, The Guardian). Leave yours.

OER COMMONS (OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES)

UNESCO claims that the universal access to quality education is key to the building of peace and intercultural dialogue. In 2002 they coined OER to mean teaching and learning materials freely available online. Willing to design resources on your own? Check out Richey & Klein (2007) for Design and Development research. Lane (2010), or Mulder (2011) for further reading.

MIHO SATO

Interested in Contemporary Painting? You will like this: Miho Sato talks to Alli Sharma at her studio in London. (Check out a blog called Articulated Artists)

ITALIAN FOR LIT GEEKS

Blogging about language geekery. If you are not big on it, save us both the embarrasment and stop reading this. If it is too late for you, check out the Lang-8 site. Just fell for Italian culture? Then, this could be one of your Ten Top Sites:  

http://www.mixcloud.com/mezzorainitalia/

DENIS DUTTON: A DARWINIAN THEORY OF BEAUTY

Controversial presentation by Denis Dutton that argues for a universal philosophy of beauty based on science. Is our appreciation of beauty an evoultionay adaptation? Leave a Reply.

WEAR SHERLOCK

I am constantly amazing at the number of curiosities you may come across. Like this blog on the wardrobe and props of the BBC show, or The Baker Street Babes Podcast: cosplay competitions included.

NATIONAL POETRY DAY, OCTOBER, 5.

The Scottish Poetry Library produces a set of poem postcards for the National Poetry Day. You can read the poems featured on this year's cards and leave a comment. Worth visiting.

PEFPI: PORTFOLIO EUROPEO PARA FUTUROS PROFESORES DE IDIOMAS

Circula por ahí un issuu con las subcategorías y los descriptores PEFPI , muy útil no sólo para los profesores que están iniciando su formación. Podéis consultar además la puesta al día del enfoque metodológico del Instituto Cervantes en esta materia. Refrescante.

EPOSTL2: PILOTING AND IMPLEMENTING THE EUROPEAN PORTFOLIO FOR STUDENTS TEACHERS OF LANGUAGES (2008-2011)

Piloting and implementing the European Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages 

(EPOSTL 2) 2008-2011.

http://coordination.ecml.at/Portals/3/documents/AM1_EPOSTL2_ProjectDescription_ETem.pdf

Further reading: http://epostl2.ecml.at/

AROMAPOETRY

A must. Just type aromapoetry, browse, and open up to Expanded Semantics.

ERNEST DOWSON

The late nineteenth-century poet Ernest Dowson, led a tragic life. When I'm in your shoes, surfing the net in search of emotion, I run after links like this video: Richard Burton reading Dowson's poem 'Non solum qualiseram bonae sub regno Cynarae' 

JIM ROGERS ON EU SPAIN BANK BAILOUT

Guest to CNBC's Fast Money last June, financial guru described the bailout of the Spanish banking sector as 'absurd economics' in a controversial interview that set internet on fire. Worth checking out.

CHINESE GARDENS: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats

This exhibition explores the rich interactions between pictorial and garden arts in China across more than one thousand years. It features more than sixty paintings as well as ceramics, carved bamboo, lacquerware, metalwork, textiles, and even several contemporary photographs that illustrate how garden imagery has remained an abiding source of artistic inspiration and invention.Through January 6, 2013. 

(Source:The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

THE CRUELLEST MONTH

The cruellest month begins with A, right; but as winter crawls in, nostalgia seems to settle in for the good old days when I wouldn't know certain details about T.S. Eliot. Worth checking out at Letras Libres, Dec. 2011. Great José Emilio Pacheco focuses on treason, while recieved opinion insists that there is not such thing as treason. Hmm...

THE NY ART BOOK FAIR

If you are arty and you know it, the New York Art Book fair is the world's premier event for artists' books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals and zines presented by 283 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, and independent publishers. So they say. 

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Christopher Hitchens' appreciation by Ian McEwan was particularly focused on his last weeks.'Hard living and linguistic lust', was stated at The Guardian upon his decease last December. Worth surfing.

NEVER MIND THE EDUPUNKS

Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu

Do not miss this article. It raised great controversy a couple of years ago. Check out an article published in 2008 at The Guardian, called: 'Nevermind the pedagogues, here's edupunk'. Learn this buzzword, and leave your comments here.

BLACK MIRROR

I would encourage everyone to watch Black Mirror, Channel 4. It is  a neo-Victorian dystopia in three chapters that will leave you breathless. El primero le hubiera encantado al Welles de Sed de Mal por su arranque. El segundo es berlusconiano. El tercero es casi Paprika de Tsusui + Philip K. Dick. En la línea de Huxley y Orwell. Muy darwincotidiano.

DICKENS 2012

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.'

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

Talking about 1775? 1854? 2012?

IN WITHOUT KNOCKING

WELCOME. You have stopped by a blog which is also a WebQuest, or a Web 2.0. It features an example of how blogs and wikis fit into the WebQuest model, originated at the San Diego State University Department of Educational Technology in 1995. Wether you are an education student, or an experienced teacher trainer looking for material, I hope you will find something to meet your needs.

My goals are to extend sudents thinking skills to the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy; to support critical thinking and problem solving through cooperative learning, scaffolding and technology integration; to encourage students to bridge the gap between school and real world experiences.