Challenge Language School

Adding subtitles to a video!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 19:23:00 +0000

Students are writing English subtitles for this video in a collaborative wiki set up for this purpose.

You can also help us by visiting our wiki.

Great!

We all have a date with the planet!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Wed, 27 May 2009 19:21:00 +0000

In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it's too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth's riches and change its patterns of consumption.

More than a movie, HOME will be a major event all over the globe : for the first time ever, a film will be released on the same day in over 50 countries and on every format : movie theatres, TV, DVD and Internet.

On June 5th we all have a date with the planet!

International Professional Development for teachers

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 16:11:00 +0000

Teachers at Challenge Education are planning to participate in Cardiff Online IATEFL 2009 to take full advantage of this event and share ideas with teachers all over the world.

Listen to Herbert Puchta, Incoming President IATEFL, in his welcoming speech.

Cardiff, UK - 31st March to 4th April 2009

Back to school time is almost here!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:03:00 +0000

We are planning and anticipating a year filled with challenging activities, great learning opportunities and exciting new projects!

Hope this is the best school year you ever had!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:12:00 +0000

May you have the best of Christmas this year and all your dreams come true. Wish you lots of love, joy and happiness
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

TeensVoices! Our Wiki keeps growing!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:42:00 +0000

TeensVoices! A collaborative Project

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0000

We have just started a collaborative project called "teensvoices" where students from different language levels are discussing and investigating several topics, such as: friends, entertainment, tv, celebrations, sports, eating habits, etc.
Students are participating actively in the wiki we have opened for the project.

We have chosen "teens voices" as the name of our project because we think that the best way of learning about teens around the world, is listening to different voices from different people, different countries and different cultures.

We would like to share this experience with students from different parts of the world. Students from all over the world are welcomed! If you are interested in participating send us an e-mail to challengeeducation@gmail.com

Pronunciation Workshop

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:39:00 +0000

First Certificate students have been attending a Pronunciation Workshop for two months.
Adriana Muñiz, a specialist in the field, gave students some pronunciation tips to help them improve their speaking skill.

ADRIANA, THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!

"I think that the workshop that we had with Adriana was really very useful. She has taught us how to speak better and how to pronounce the words in their different uses. This was a different experience for me and I realise how important pronunciation is." Victoria

"I think that the workshop with Adriana was very useful because most of us speak with a Spanish tone, so with her help and her tips we could improve our pronunciation and also our tones. Now we are more carefull when reading and speaking and we try to do it with the best pronunciation." Anotnella

"I felt great in the workshop with Adriana. I think it helped us and we could improve our way of speaking. We learnt new words and a lot of things and now, we have a better idea of the intonation of sentences and questions." Eliana

"I think that the workshop we did with Adriana was really an interesting activity and helped us in many situations, for example, to "act" some dialogues really helped us to sound more natural when we have to express ourselves. We worked in groups all the time and it was really a good and interesting way of practising our speaking." Erica

"I felt really comfortable studying with Adriana, she is an excellent teacher. It was very useful for us to learn different tips for pronunciation and many other things we didn't know." Damaris

"For me the workshop was a really useful opportunity for us to improve our speaking because we could compare different intonations and the way we speak. She reminded me of the way British actresses speak." Juan Manuel

Young learners and their stories!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:01:00 +0000

After reading "Lemons are not red", students created their own stories and assembled beautiful books to share with their friends.

Children enjoyed reading their stories aloud using voicethread in the class.

Would you like to listen to them?

CONGRATULATIONS!

CONGRATULATIONS!

CONGRATULATIONS!

OLYMPIC GAMES - BEIJING 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:09:00 +0000

Olympism
"Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles."

Introduce yourself!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Mind Mapping

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:16:00 +0000

The web 2.0 offers many free mind mapping tools that are really very useful for:

* Organizing Ideas
* Summarizing information;
* Taking Notes;
* Consolidating information from different research sources;
* Thinking through complex problems;
* Presenting information;
* Storing and recalling information.

Tone Buzan believes mind mapping techniques are a powerful thinking tool and in the video he explains why.

We have been using mind mapping tools with students to summarize different texts and increase and consolidate contextualized vocabulary.
In this opportunity we decided to use Bubbl.us as it proved to be a very easy tool to use and it helped students experienced collaborative online editing.
"Mapping provides a learning framework in which all the areas of language skill, speaking, listening, reading and writing, can be used in meaningful ways." Robert Fisher.

Reference: Robert Fisher, Teaching Children to Learn, Nelson Thornes Ltd 1995

Stories for young learners

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:49:00 +0000

I learnt about Lookybook reading Lissa Harrison's blog.
Lookbook is a great place to discover and share beautiful stories.
Young learners loved this story and they enjoyed the artwork!!!

Tip: Click on the eyeballs of the embed to view a larger version.

Students and their teacher Karina are now creating their own stories!!!

Recycling!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:31:00 +0000

Young learners recycled old boxes and other cardboard packaging. They had great and imaginative ideas to bring something old and used back to life.

Earth Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:04:00 +0000

This is just a quick reminder about the upcoming Earth Day webcast on 22 April 2008.

http://edtechtalk.com/earthcast08

April 22nd 2008 - Earth Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Earth Day is next Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008. It is time to celebrate, reflect, encourage action and promote environmental citizenship.

We want Earth Day to be everyday because our planet needs protection.
In order to develop a sense of environmental responsibility students at Challenge Education will get involved in many activities and projects.

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents,
it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors,
we borrow it from our Children." Ancient Indian Proverb

Spicing up your personal Profiles! Second Part

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:17:00 +0000

Here we have the first three comics created by students who accepted the challenge and introduced themselves using a web 2.0 tool.

Sabrina, Vanina and Patricio! Congratulations!

Description of Sabry from sabry on Comiqs

My Description from pachuu on Comiqs

My friend Vany from vany on Comiqs

And, of course, I also created my own comiq:

Introductions from saa on Comiqs

Spicing up your personal profile!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:04:00 +0000

Over the past few days the School Network has been growing very fast and, as a student, you are now deciding the appearance of your personal page, choosing a photo, writing your personal profile and starting to communicate with your friends.

It is interesting to see how motivated and enthusiastic we all are. The Network is giving us another opportunity to use the language for real purposes and develop our spontaneous communication skills.

In the next weeks we will be analyzing different strategies to spice up our personal profiles.

One of the websites we will work on is "Comiqs" because it will let us turn photos into a sort of comic strip.

The idea is to create a comic strip with a funny introduction of yourself. In order to do this, you will have to choose some characters that will introduce you by telling us about your likes/dislikes, hobbies, any special skill, personal goals, topics you like talking about, etc.

Ready to accept this new challenge?

Welcome Back!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:49:00 +0000

All courses are starting this week. We wish all students, teachers, parents and staff the best of luck on the beginning of the new academic year.

Challenge Education goes ONLINE!
Challenge Language School has a new place to interact. We have opened a social network on Ning, providing a place for members to share "ideas", debate, talk about themselves, show pictures and videos, participate in different interactive projects and enjoy learning English.

We hope everyone has an enjoyable and meaningful learning experience.
...working together to build community.

Learning new Vocabulary

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 17:03:00 +0000

Learning new vocabulary is always a great challenge for foreign language students that need a wide array of target language words to be able to communicate successfully.

Today, I want to show you a website that will help you expand your vocabulary knowledge.
Visuwords is one of my favourite web-based tools.

* It is is an online graphical dictionary that shows the relationships between words.
* It is a powerful tool that allows you to increase and enrich your vocabulary.
* It is a dictionary and a thesaurus!

How it works.
Type a word into the search space and see how the word is connected to other words!

Experience the site by yourself and tell us you opinion.

The Barbershop

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:14:00 +0000

Classes are just around the corner. Everybody is organizing the academic year.
But before we start, I wanted to share something with you.
Last year a student suggested that I should see a video called “The Barbershop”. He told me it was best heard with earphones and closed eyes. He was intriguing and I am very curious.
Imagine what I did as soon as I could... Yes, “youtube” and … “the barbershop”!!!

It was really impressive! Amazing! So realistic!
It was like I was in the room with the barber!

Check it out, you'll be amazed!
But please, remember to put you headphones on, turn the volume up, and last but not least, don’t forget to close your eyes!

Extremely life like three dimensional audio recording.

How is it recorded?
Dummy head recording (also known as artificial head or Kunstkopf) is a method used to make binaural recordings, It allows a listener wearing head phones to perceive the directionality and the room acoustics of single or multiple sources.

Do you know any other example of holophonics (3D audio recording) that you would like to share? Leave a comment with your suggestions!

Great News! KET - PET - FCE

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:01:00 +0000

Great News!
We have just received the results of the December Cambridge exams for KET, PET and FIRST CERTIFICATE.
Congratulations to all the students who have passed!
Jennifer Shirly, María Belén, Natalia, Gabriela, Miriam, Florencia, Karina, Rodrigo, Pablo, María Florencia, Alexis, Lucas, Jennifer Solange, Brenda, Daniela, Andrés, Vanina, Marilina.
We know you worked very hard and we are really very proud of you!

General English Certificates.
The Cambridge ESOL General English suite of exams has a wide choice of certificates reflecting the very different needs and abilities of people.
The certificates are recognized by universities, companies, and educational authorities in many countries around the world, and the exams are administered in more than 130 countries.

KET is Cambridge ESOL's exam which recognises the ability to deal with everyday written and spoken English at a basic level.

PET is an exam for people who can use everyday written and spoken English at an intermediate level. It covers all four language skills — reading, writing, listening and speaking. Preparing for the exam is a popular way to develop and improve your language skills because it provides practical language practice in a variety of everyday work, study and leisure situations.

FCE is an exam for people who can use everyday written and spoken English at an upper-intermediate level. It is an ideal exam for people who want to use English for work or study purposes.

CAE is an exam for advanced users of English. This exam is aimed at people who can use written and spoken English for most professional and social purposes. It is widely recognised work or study purposes.

FCE and CAE have recently undergone a review and the examinations have been updated. The first session of the updated FCE and CAE exams will take place in December 2008.

English for the workplace - The Business English Certificates
The Business English Certificates(BEC) are internationally recognised qualifications that show to employers what skills the test taker has for using English in the workplace.
BEC is an ideal English language exam if you are preparing for a career in business. There are three different levels of BEC: BEC Preliminary, BEC Vantage and BEC Higher.

Still on summer holidays?

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:18:00 +0000

Most of you are still on summer holidays! That’s great.

Are you familiar with the TV Serie “Lost”? We are sure you are!
Do you like it? Do you have a favourite character? Do you have your own theory?

Lost is a serial drama television series that follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, after a passenger jet, flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, crashes somewhere in the South Pacific. Each episode typically features a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life.

Here is a selection of songs that have been featured on the first three seasons.

The fourth season of Lost began airing on Thursday, January 31, 2008. For those who want a very short summary of the previous three seasons, here is an 8.15 minute video.

We found several interesting sites that we want to share with you:

Characters’ connections.
Who is your favourite character? How is he/she connected to other characters?
Discover it visiting this interactive place.

Find 815 – Interactive Story.
Sam’s fiancé was abroad Flight 815. When he sets out to find answers, Sam is taken to a place he never imagined.
Complete these puzzles and join in the search for missing Oceanic Flight 815. If successful you'll be able to access exclusive LOST Season 4 clues on FIND815.COM where you can join Sam Thomas on his quest for answers.

Do You love Video Games?
If you are ready to survive the island and find your way home, visit this site and download the game. (release date: February 2008)

Your theory.
Does everything happen for a reason? What's happening to the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815? Who are the Others? What is the Island and where is everybody?

Think you've got it figured out? Share your theories here, rate those of other fans and see how yours measure up.
What's your theory?

Why don’t you leave us a comment and tell us if you like “Lost” and why?
If you find an interesting related site let us know!

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 12:55:00 +0000

Agregar pacman a mi blog

Happy Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Challenge Education) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:13:00 +0000

Unfortunately, this is our last post. The end of the year is already here. Most probably you are all very busy studying for your final exams and also making great plans for your holidays. For this reason, I won't take much of your time today. I just want to thank you all for having trusted me in this project, and for all your comments and collaboration. To start getting in the Christmas mood, here you have a very famous Christmas song that I would like to share with you.

Christmas is not only about giving presents, eating and having fun. The end of the year is a good time to calm down, relax and reflect on the things that we would like to change in our lives and in the world too.Why not? For this purpose, I would like to introduce you to a poet I really like: Benjamin Zephaniah. As he is better at putting words together than I am, he is going to introduce himself.
"My full name is Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah which is Christian, Jewish and Muslim. I was born in the district of Handsworth in Birmingham. My poetry is strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and I can't remember a time when I was not creating poetry. This had nothing to do with school where poetry meant very little to me, infact I had finished full time education at the age of 13."
"I try to write poems that are fun but they should also have a serious message." If you want to know more about him go to his official website. You can have a taste of his poetry by reading this poem I have selected.
Christmas Wise
All I want fe Christmas is world peace
I don't want loads of food dat I really can't eat
All I want fe Christmas is a long holiday
An a house in Jamaica where I can stay.
I don't want kisses under mistletoe from
Sloppy people I don't know,
I won't be putting out nu stocking cos
I don't wear de tings,
I won't be cutting down nu Christmas trees.
I like dem living.

All I want fe Christmas is dis planet for ever
Fully complete wid its ozone layer
All I want fe Christmas is friends and...
No more records from Status Quo,
I don't want a white Christmas and
I bet We'll get nu more of dem cos of de Greenhouse effect,
An I reckon at Christmas we create too much waste
Maybe a green Christmas is more to my taste.
All I want fe Christmas is sum honesty
About de wisdom of Christmas
An how it should be
All I want fe Christmas is clean air,
But I reckon I won't get none
An I don't think dat's fair.

I hope you liked it. Thanks for all. Happy Holidays, Christmas and New year! See you next year.