Learning Process

All the words in the world, pronounced? Hats off, Forvo

For those learning to speak a new language, pronunciation can often be a hurdle. For example, stress is very important in Italian, and learners need to be very clear on which syllable(s) they stress. While most words follow the rules, there are always exceptions, and getting the stress right may be the difference between being understood by a native speaker and being greeted with a look of incomprehension.

While the claim of all the words in the world, pronounced is a pretty bold claim, forvo.com is undeniably a pretty impressive achievement. Its an excellent idea for a website: a crowd-sourced pronunciation guide. Users ask for words they are not sure about to be pronounced, and other users provide recordings demonstrating exactly how they should be said. The recordings are then saved to the sites database, so if anybody else searches for the same word, theyre taken to the entries that already exist.

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Game Over for Coaches?

Suspended Edcouch-Elsa High School head baseball coach Sergio Rubio was all smiles Wednesday night at a school board meeting for his proposed termination and non renewal.

There was an outpouring of support for the coach from players, EEISD faculty and his family.

His attorney John Shergold said Rubio has nothing to worry about.

“The allegations that have been made against Coach Rubio are 100% false,” said Shergold. “Coach Rubio followed all the policies and procedures as he’s required to do and hopefully the district puts this behind them and reinstates him as head coach.”

The school board suspended Rubio and assistant coach George Franco after administrators said they saw evidence proving how their failed supervision of teammates on a bus led to an apparent sexual behavior between students.

The school district’s attorney said the bus surveillance video shows sex acts, a female student performing oral sex on a male student while the two coaches were just a few seats away.

Allegations Rubio’s attorney disputes and Shergold said the coach thought it was a bad idea to have a girl on board the bus to begin with.

“Coach Rubio is the one who basically rang the alarm bell and basically said ‘Hey school district, we should have any female student trainers on the bus,’” claims Shergold. “Well he pu

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Phumzile – UNESCO to release research into mobile learning initiatives, policies and teacher development

Over five weeks UNESCO, in partnership with Nokia, is launching its Working Paper Series on Mobile Learning with the release of a set of twelve papers reviewing mobile learning initiatives, implications for ICT in education policies and how mobile technologies support teacher development. The papers will be released according to regions of the world.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to achieving the pillars of Education for All (EFA), which are universal access to education, equity in education and the delivery of quality education. Given the unprecedented uptake of mobile devices in the world – there are now almost 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions – these ICT present a new and exciting possibility for supporting EFA.

UNESCO is committed to fully exploring how mobile learning, using mobile devices alone or in combination with other ICT, can improve education. While mobile learning is certainly not new, only in very recent years is it receiving widespread attention and building serious momentum. The e

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Deadline looms in Edcouch-Elsa superintendent hearing

Tuesday was the deadline to submit briefs and proposed findings in the termination hearing for the former Edcouch-Elsa ISD Superintendent Dr. Delfino Aleman.   Francisco Zabarte, the TEA hearing examiner, said he will review their documents as well as three day’s worth of transcripts from the hearing.   Zabarte will have until April 2 to make a recommendation based on the hearing on whether he agrees with the school boards decision to terminate Aleman, or to have him re-instated as superintendent.   He will then submit his findings to the Edcouch-Elsa ISD school board, who must present and vote on the recommendation at their next board meeting after the April 2 deadline.   The school board and Aleman have the option to appeal the recommendation to the TEA commissioner.   The three-day, public hearing began on March 5 at the administration building of the Edcouch-Elsa Independent School District.   At issue was Dr. Aleman’s suspension and subsequet termination as superintendent for the district.   The EEISD school board appointed Aleman to the position back in May.   He t Read more…

What Do OLPC Peru Results Mean for ICT in Education?

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has been a part of a larger ICT4E discussion, which has included ongoing debate over the effectiveness of the XO and its various deployments.  Since its inception, OLPC has relied mainly on aspirations, visions, and projections to support investment from various partners across the globe.  Pilots programs were conducted at various levels of deployment, programming, and stakeholder engagement.  More recently, larger, more longer-standing deployments have reached a point where assessments are now coming to fruition.

Concurrently, as the OLPC offering developed and evolved, so too did a variety of education technology initiatives and device platforms.  More specifically, the presence of similar programs and other form factors (tablets, mobile phones) increased the channels through which a variety of activities for education, instruction, communications, and business could be conducted. 

These processes contribute to shifting expectations, which despite the support or critique of one assessment or another, highlight the importance of setting clear objectives that are cognizant of both the array of available tools as well as the surrounding systems that have an indirect, but no less significant affect on final outcomes.

A recent Technology Salon in Washington, D.C. touc

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France retires “mademoiselle” from official usage

Though it is a familiar and staple word in France and French language classrooms alike, the word mademoiselle (the English equivalent of miss), has come under intense fire recently in France from 2 prominent French feminist organizations, who for months have been campaigning to have the word removed from official documents. Their complaint lies in the words implications: mademoiselle in contrast with madame indicates the marital status of the female in question, whereas the male form, monsieur, gives away no such information. A spokeswoman for one of the feminist groups, Magali de Haas, said that the term harkens to notions of female subjugation.

From the New York Times article:

In a memo addressed to state administrators across France, Prime Minister François Fillon ordered the honorific — akin to “damsel” and the equivalent of “miss” — banished from official forms and registries. The use of “

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