Saturday, 20 December 2014

animated gifs for the esl classroom

Almost two years ago, we looked at the 'gif':
Jay Doubleyou: crazy adverts
Jay Doubleyou: animations

And you can do a lot with them - especially if they're funny:
For animated GIFs
Animated GIFs

This is brilliant:
PANDA | For animated GIFs

More seriously, they can be used for the esl/tefl classroom:
More Reaction GIFs for the ESL Classroom | ESL Technology.com
50 ways to use video in the english language classroom

They can be used for children and beginners:

Uploaded on Aug 19, 2010

CD at: http://elflearning.jp/
Download at: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/elflearning
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24 food flash cards for EFL/ESL learners and children. Can you say the food fast enough? Keep trying until you can! ELF Learning creates learning materials for kids all over the world. Based in Japan, we publish books, CDs, DVDs and of course...learning videos!

Our videos are designed for children ages 2~10 and cover a wide range of topics.

Our song videos are a mix of original and classic children's songs. We try hard to add the ELF touch - clear vocals, different genres and lots of cool instruments.

Our learning videos cover vocabulary, phrases and patterns perfect for the ESL and EFL classroom.

Many of our videos work well with special needs children, especially those with Autistic Disorder, Speech and Language Impairments and Speech, Reading and Learning Disabilities. We often receive emails from parents thanking us for helping their child learn to speak or read and each time it makes our day!

(You can learn more about autism at this link: http://www.autismspeaks.org/)

You can learn more about ELF Learning here:

Website: https://www.elflearning.jp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elflearning?...
Twitter: @elflearning
Alternate YouTube Page (for teachers and material support): https://www.youtube.com/user/ELFLearning

ELF Learning - Everyone Loves FUN Learning!

Learn Food Vocabulary! - YouTube

Again, how do we make them:
How to Make an Animated GIF | English Language Arts and Literacy | Classroom Resources | PBS Learning Media
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turner prize won by duncan campbell

The Turner Prize is Britain's biggest modern art prize:
Jay Doubleyou: turner prize 2014

The shortlist has been out there for some time:
Jay Doubleyou: turner prize nominee: duncan campbell
Turner Prize 2014 artists: Duncan Campbell | Tate

And earlier this month, it was announced that Duncan Campbell had won:
BBC News - Turner Prize 2014: Duncan Campbell wins £25,000 prize

Duncan Campbell is the Turner Prize winner. Even I'm baffled, says Tate boss

Duncan Campbell wins the 2014 Turner Prize for It for Others, a video installation that the chairman of the judges admits she doesn't entirely understand

Duncan Campbell is the winner of this year’s Turner Prize with a 54-minute film that even the chairman of the jury described as “a bit baffling”.

Campbell’s film, It for Others (2013), is a montage of Marxist economics, contemporary dance, comedy ketchup bottles, African tribal masks and images of the IRA member Joe McCann.

According to Campbell, a Dublin-born artist now based in Glasgow, it is an “open-ended” essay on the commodification of objects and the omissions, lapses and prejudices used to portray histories in certain ways.

Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, admitted she was not entirely sure she knew what it meant - but said that the artist had deliberately made his work ambiguous.

Speaking before Campbell received the £25,000 prize at a ceremony in London, Curtis said: “It’s a mysterious work, I think, and he uses lots of devices to keep you watching and to make you wonder, ‘What does it mean?’ It has clarity and also quite a lot ambiguity, and that’s quite odd."

Duncan Campbell is the Turner Prize winner. Even I'm baffled, says Tate boss - Telegraph
Turner Prize 2014: 'There's only one real artist here' - Telegraph

But what is it about?

"It for Others" is, as its voiceover announces, a film about the production, meaning and circulation of objects. It takes its cue and inspiration from Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ essay film Statues Also Die (1953), which examines the colonial commodification of African artefacts (that “death” being the removal of meaning that comes with their plucking from their original religious and social contexts). Organised in three distinct and tightly argued “chapters”, Campbell’s work takes as starting point the African artefacts that Marker and Resnais filmed. It considers the traumas of colonialism and the arguments for repatriation of precious objects from western museums; one passage directly takes issue with British Museum director Neil MacGregor’s statements on the Benin bronzes. Indeed, Campbell had wanted to film those objects held by the museum that Marker had shot in the 1950s, but negotiations became protracted and time ran out, forcing Campbell to use reproductions instead.

Duncan Campbell: ‘Politics seeps into everything’ | Art and design | The Guardian
Turner prize 2014: Duncan Campbell wins Britain’s prestigious art award | Art and design | The Guardian

Another Guardian artist disagrees:

Duncan Campbell – currently favourite to win the prize – takes a very different approach. His politics is analytical. The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu as well as Marx’s theory of value are among his references in a 54-minute film that also includes an attack on the British Museum’s director Neil MacGregor for being a wishy-washy liberal who defends the museum’s ownership of Benin sculptures stolen from this west African state in 1897.

I know one thing – MacGregor’s liberal history of cultural encounters and global diversity, which he communicates through books and radio as well as British Museum’s displays, has taught people a lot more about global art than anyone will learn from Campbell’s film. I found the use of African sculpture in his film offensively and wifully ignorant, so obsessed with ideological point-scoring that it treats African art as a mere prop.

It is Campbell, not MacGregor, who refuses to look at African art as a meaningful human creation. His commentary insists that western modern eyes cannot “see” the true nature, the real and lost context of these objects. Instead we imagine them as “art” to be bought and sold. This sounds deep but is both cliched and glib. In reality, history can excavate the cultures of 19th-century Africa as intimately as it can recreate any past – and MacGregor tries to do just that. The British Museum displays African artefacts well. It invites visitors to explore them in depth. By contrast, Campbell uses them to score debating points in a film that reduces politics to an elitist pseudo-philosophical rant.

Why is political art such elitist twaddle? | Art and design | The Guardian

The Daily Mail might agree:
Why does the Daily Mail love to hate art? | Art and design | The Guardian
Duncan Campbell wins Turner Prize 2014 for film about African art | Daily Mail Online
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1914 christmas truce remembered

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, nearly 100 years ago, military from both sides met in "no man's land" to play football and sing carols with each other.

Watch: 1914 Christmas truce commemorated with London street art

Centenary of World War One's 1914 Christmas truce is remembered with two pieces of street art in London and Berlin

By Charlotte Krol, video source VisitFlanders

3:21PM GMT 19 Dec 2014

The Christmas truce between British and German forces during World War One is being commemorated in the form of street art in London and Berlin.

Artwork completed this week at Great Eastern Street's Shoreditch Art Wall illustrates the unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front in Flanders Fields around Christmas 1914. Berlin also has a display at the city's Potsdamer Platz.

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, nearly 100 years ago, military from both sides met in "no man's land" to play football and sing carols with each other.

Andrew Daines, Director of VISITFLANDERS UK and Ireland said: “We hope that through these artworks, visitors and locals in London and Berlin will take a moment to reflect, to remember and to learn from this monumental period in history.”

The artwork will be on display until December 26.

Video: Watch: 1914 Christmas truce commemorated with London street art - Telegraph

Graffiti artist makes his contribution to the street art in Shoreditch. Credit: VisitFlanders

And a great place to go for information:

CBBC Newsround - 100 years on from the 1914 Christmas Truce

For lots more info:
Christmas truce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And a statue has just been unveiled in Liverpool:

BBC News - Christmas truce football statue unveiled in Liverpool
Sculpture named All Together Now symbolising 1914 Christmas Day truce unveiled at Liverpool's Bombed Out Church - Liverpool Echo

climate change: the role of livestock and agriculture.......... or: "can steak save the planet?"

The impact of livestock on the environment is clear:
Cow 'emissions' more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars - Climate Change - Environment - The Independent
Spotlight: Livestock impacts on the environment - FAO

You care about the planet right? Well consider this! - YouTube

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Cowspiracy Short - YouTube

This might lead you to wanting to eat less meat:
10 benefits of eating less meat | Fox News
Meat Free Monday - One day a week can make a world of difference
BBC News - MPs urge UK to eat less meat to help global food supplies
If you must eat meat, save it for Christmas | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

... or even to eating no meat at all:
Environmental Destruction | Why Vegan? | Vegan Outreach
How does eating meat harm the environment? | Frequently Asked Questions | About PETA | PETA

However, others would argue that vegetarianism is not the answer:

Some environmental activists claim that adopting a vegetarian diet may be a way of focusing on personal actions and righteous gestures rather than systemic change. Dave Riley, an Australian environmentalist, states that "being meatless and guiltless seems seductively simple while environmental destruction rages around us," noting that animals can contribute to the food chain.^[24]

Bill Mollison has argued in his Permaculture Design Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. On US farmland, much less soil erosion is associated with pastureland used for livestock grazing than with land used for production of crops.^[25] Robert Hart has also developed forest gardening, which has since been adopted as a common permaculture design element, as a sustainable plant-based food production system.^[26]

Environmental vegetarianism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indeed, it could be argued that the Neolithic Revolution which brought us agriculture

neolithic_revolution.jpg (590×782)

... has resulted in the current unsustainable trajectory:
Futures Forum: Climate change: Entering the Anthropocene

Indeed, some would even describe our foray into agriculture 10,000 years ago as a 'disaster':
The Anthropik Network » The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
neolithic hunter-gatherers: Marshall Sahlins- The Original Affluent Society
Futures Forum: On the Transition: "Future Primitive"

Jared Diamond, the author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” describes the situation as a classic bait-and-switch. Hunter-gatherers were “seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production.” By then they were locked in—they had to farm more and more land just to keep everyone alive. Deriving strength from their large, poorly nourished numbers, the farmers gradually killed off most of the hunter-gatherers and drove the rest from their land. Diamond considers agriculture to be not just a setback but “the worst mistake in the history of the human race,” the origin of “the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.”

The Sanctuary - The New Yorker

This is from last month's New Yorker magazine:

Anya Fernald, with employees, at the Belcampo farm, in Gazelle, California. She wants to restore meat to its status as a luxury: delectable, expensive, and rare. “Ex-vegetarians are our target market,” she says.CREDITPHOTOGRAPHS BY CAROLYN DRAKE / PANOS

In 1920, she says, people ate four ounces of meat every three or four days; they all had a tub of lard in the cupboard; and their hips were wider than their waists. (Today, the average American male eats 6.9 ounces of meat a day, and women eat 4.4. Lard has all but disappeared, and so have waistlines.)

More than any other food, meat focusses cultural anxieties. In the seventies, beef caused heart attacks; in the eighties and afterward it carried mad-cow. Recent decades have brought to light the dark side of industrial agriculture, with its hormone- and antibiotic-intensive confinement-feeding operations, food-safety scares, and torture-porn optics. The social and environmental costs, the moral burden, the threat to individual health—all seem increasingly hard to justify when weighed against a tenderloin.

In the late nineteen-fifties, Savory [Allan Savory, a seventy-nine-year-old biologist and former member of parliament from Zimbabwe and a pioneer of a grazing strategy called holistic resource management] watched the Luangwa Valley, where he was stationed as a game ranger, turning into desert, with crusted, bare soil and oxidizing plants. Like others, he blamed overgrazing by animals, and he took part in the culling of forty thousand elephants. The land worsened. He reversed himself. In nature, he began to argue, herds of migratory animals cluster in small areas, feeding for a day or two before, driven off by predators, they move to a new spot. During the short grazing period, they till the soil with their hooves, making it receptive to water; deposit fertilizer; and chew just enough of the plant to allow regrowth. He believes that by returning large herds of livestock to the landscape and moving them frequently, ranchers can restore land to productivity. As Savory told me when I went to see him in New Mexico, where he lives half the year, cattle caused the problem and only cattle can solve it.
Cows, which produce eighteen per cent of the methane emitted in the United States, are unaccustomed to being cast as climate-change heroes. Most range scientists consider overgrazing to be the cause of much of the land degradation in the American West, and conservationists advocate “resting” the land—fencing it off from animals entirely—as the only remedy. Savory’s contrarian position, and the fact that his results rely mostly on self-reporting and cannot be replicated experimentally (too many factors to account for), has made his claims suspect in the scientific community. Several studies, for instance, have pointedly refuted the notion that hoof action improves water infiltration of the soil. He says that one distinguished wildlife biologist told him, “Allan, either you are wrong and we will not be able to dig a hole deep enough to bury you in or you are right and we will not be able to build a monument high enough.”

Can Steak Save the Planet? New Yorker

Finally, it might not be a matter of what you eat, but where it comes from:
Futures Forum: km zero - zero food miles
Futures Forum: Saving the rainforests....... indigenous communities' and palm oil corporations' commitment to "zero-deforestation"
Futures Forum: Eco-imperialism, zero-deforestation and palm oil
Futures Forum: "Sometimes the parched topsoil of the Sahara settles on London and the whole of England": How the results of intensive farming in Africa are felt thousands of miles away
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Thursday, 18 December 2014

women and science

This google doodle came out earlier this year, on the birthday of the scientist Dorothy Hodgkin:

“The situation in which I find myself will, I very much hope, not be so uncommon in the future that it will require any comment or special treatment, as more use is made of the many gifts which women share equally with men.” Half a century later, Dorothy Hodgkin is still the only female British scientist to have won a Nobel Prize.

These days there’s a great deal of energy channelled into persuading girls to take science at school. So is the day-to-day working environment any better for women in science?

How can we encourage more girls to study science? - Education - News - The Independent

Hodgkin remains the only British woman to have ever won one of the science Nobels, which she was awarded in 1964, but the British press were unable to forget her gender. The Daily Mail reported at the time: "Oxford housewife wins Nobel", while the Telegraph wrote: "British woman wins Nobel Prize – £18,750 prize to mother of three."

Dorothy Hodgkin: The only British woman to win a Nobel science prize gets a doodle | Technology | The Guardian

Years later, and women are still under-represented in the world of science:

There are six times more men than women working in the fields of science, technology and engineering, so it stands to reason that there won't be an equal amount of role models available to women considering entering the professions, to rectify this the Medical Research Council has produced a book celebrating great scientific achievements made by women in the past 100 years.

100 years of scientific breakthroughs - by women | Society | The Guardian

Why women are under-represented in science and engineering

Confidence, stereotyped language and visiblity: Julia King explains five factors that hold women back

Words are powerful. Everyday we hear scientists are 'he', hairdressers are 'she'. Photograph: Guardian

Julia King

Monday 20 October 2014 11.28 BST

Comments25

1. Confidence

From early school days to a career, confidence matters a great deal. When we start gender conditioning in childhood, by labelling dolls for girls and Lego for boys, for example, the seed is planted that hands-on, practical activities are not for girls. We are also sending them the message that, when it comes to these activities, society has no confidence in them.

Evidence shows that for a successful career confidence matters as much as competence. This disappoints me. Quality should be noticed without having to shout about it. In my experience, female peers feel the same way too and this influences and drives their behaviour: if they do a good job, this will be noticed and promotion will come when they are ready. They also tend to underestimate their abilities and predict they will do worse in tests than they actually do. On average, men exhibit the opposite traits.

When an Institute of Leadership and Management survey of UK managers asked them how confident they felt, 50% of female respondents reported self-doubtabout job performance and careers, while less than 30% of men gave similar responses. This is the “impostor syndrome” at work: the feeling “I got here by accident; I am not really up to this job.”

2. Language

Words are powerful, and feeling excluded by language can have a lasting cultural impact. We hear it every day in generalised speech without questioning it: scientists are “he”, engineers are unwaveringly men. For example, students hear careers advisers or teachers talking about he the welder and she the hairdresser all the time. With our unconscious bias towards male and female jobs, we make women in science and engineering invisible.

A 2011 study by the Institute of Physics called It’s Different for Girls found that independent girls’ schools sent four times more girls on to do A-level physics than co-ed schools. The lack of male versus female subjects may well have been a factor in this increase.
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In the workplace the language women use and identify with inadvertently holds them back too. Women tend to use more cautious, less aggressive language, and often apologise for what they are about to say, eg “This isn’t quite my subject area, but perhaps you might consider …” This can be interpreted as weakness and makes what they say easier to dismiss or ignore.

3. Visibility

Whether we like it or not, we are all product of our upbringing and surroundings. To understand that science and engineering careers are realistic options, women need to see the evidence that those they identify with, people like them, can and do succeed. They also need to know that the people around them see science and engineering as valid choices for them.

Role models are really important, even though the messages may be subliminal. I’m not just talking about seeing female experts on TV – although they are certainly a positive influence – I’m also talking about the influence of parents, family members, teachers and peers.

If parents see science and engineering jobs as good career options for their daughters, it follows that their daughters will too. If schools reinforce the message and provide more information and advice, young women are able to make positive, informed choices. If employers make the workplace more accessible to women we retain women in science and engineering careers. This could develop into a virtuous circle, with mums in science or engineering jobs becoming role models to their children, and companies playing their part by contributing to students’ careers experience in school.

4. Feminism

I’m talking about the kind of feminism Emma Watson’s rightly supported in her now famous UN HeForShe speech. If we as a society aim for equality in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) careers and stop thinking in terms of a gender divide, we can start to even up the balance to the benefit of individuals and businesses.

The women’s business council report makes the point that while women need work, work also needs women. By equalising the labour force participation rates of men and women, the UK could increase GDP per capita growth by 10% in 2030.

5. Catch-22

Unfortunately there is a catch to all this. Imagining that women overcome the many cultural barriers we’ve created to enter STEM careers, in my opinion women are penalised for being “too confident”, whereas it’s acceptable behaviour in their male colleagues. We need to change this too.

At the Women in Science symposium at Cambridge University’s Murray Edwards College, it was great to hear young sixth form girls presenting their ideas and solutions, alongside experts. Their involvement in these issues is the key to turning a corner on points 1–4 and to finally getting rid of catch-22.

Aston University’s vice chancellor Professor Julia King is regularly called upon to advise government on education and technology issues. She was also involved in the Women in Science symposium at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.
Why women are under-represented in science and engineering | Women in Leadership | The Guardian

But there are changes happening:
The Institute of Physics blog » Blog Archive Physics departments recognised for reducing gender inequality - The Institute of Physics blog - The Institute of Physics blog - physics news, physics views, physics events and physics blogs

And there are organistions pushing for change:
Welcome to WISE - WISE
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how whales change the climate

Did you know plankton absorbs CO2?

How do oceans absorb carbon dioxide? Scientists find clues. - CSMonitor.com
Smallest plankton grow fastest with rising CO2

And did you know that whales not only eat plankton - but they 'farm' it?
Ocean Drifters on Vimeo
Plankton: Ocean Drifters - Script

In which case, we should not only be thinking about the effects of climate change on the oceans
WWF - Impact of climate change on whales

... but in fact we should be looking to whales as countering climate change:
Why whale poo could be the secret to reversing the effects of climate change | Philip Hoare | Comment is free | theguardian.com
Is Saving The Whales Key To Mitigating Climate Change?

This film suggests a type of 'benign geo-engineering'...

Published on Nov 30, 2014

This video was produced as a gift to humanity by Sustainable Human (sustainablehuman.me). Visit us to find out how you can support and create videos like How Whales Change Climate in collaboration with a global team of volunteers. Together, we can change the story of the world.

Visit the official landing page for more information on this incredible story:

How Whales Change Climate - Sustainable Human

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

When whales were at their historic populations, before their numbers were reduced, it seems that whales might have been responsible for removing tens of millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere every year. Whales change the climate. The return of the great whales, if they are allowed to recover, could be seen as a benign form of geo-engineering. It could undo some of the damage we have done, both to the living systems of the sea, and to the atmosphere.

Credits:
Editor: Steve Agnos
Producer: Chris Agnos
Narration: George Monbiot

For more from George Monbiot, visit monbiot.com/ and for more on "rewilding" visit Feral | George Monbiot and/or check out George Monbiot's book Feral: rewilding the land, the sea and human life

Academic Sources:

Stephen Nicol et al, 2010. Southern Ocean iron fertilization by baleen whales and Antarctic krill. Fish and Fisheries, vol 11, pp 203–209.

Kakani Katija and John O. Dabiri, 2009. A viscosity-enhanced mechanism for biogenic
ocean mixing. Nature, Vol. 460, pp 624-627. doi:10.1038/nature08207

Joe Roman and James J. McCarthy, 2010) The Whale Pump: Marine Mammals Enhance Primary Productivity in a Coastal Basin. PLoS ONE vol 5 no 10, pp 1-8. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0013255

Daniel G. Boyce, Marlon R. Lewis and Boris Worm, 2010. Global phytoplankton decline over the past century. Nature, Vol. 466, pp591-596. doi:10.1038/nature09268

Steve Nichol, 12th July 2011. Vital Giants: why living seas need whales. New Scientist, No.2820. http://www.newscientist.com/article/m...

Trish J. Lavery et al, 2010. Iron defecation by sperm whales stimulates carbon export in the Southern Ocean. Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. Vol 277, pp 3527-3531.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0863

James A. Estes, et al, 2011. Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth. Science, Vol 333, pp 301-306. doi: 10.1126/science.1205106

How Whales Change Climate - YouTube
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Tuesday, 16 December 2014

michelle henry: an excellent source of esl materials - in english!

A very good place to go with all sorts of things on every subject under the sun:

RESCOL -

RESSOURCES POUR LE COLLEGE

EN ANGLAIS

ESL RESOURCES

ENTREZ!

COME IN!

Site de Michelle Henry
Professeur d'anglais

michelle.henry7@gmail.com

www.michellehenry.fr

It is in French as you can see, but it's easy to navigate:

RESSOURCES POUR LE COLLEGE

2 SITES : RESCOL 1 + RESCOL 2

ACTIVITES et DOCUMENTS pour LES ELEVES	LIVRES D'OR
ARCHIVES	Décembre 2014 - 2ème partie - NOUVEAUX SITES
BASES	ORAL
DOSSIERS	SPECIAL PROFESSEURS
ECRIT	VOCABULAIRE
FETES et EVENEMENTS de l'année	'WEBQUESTS'
GRAMMAIRE

Dernière mise à jour : 15/12/2014

RESCOL 1 - Ressources pour le Collège en anglais - ESL Resources

Just click on 'dossiers' and you get lots of files on particular themes:
RESCOL 1- files - Ressources pour le Collège en anglais - ESL Resources

Or under 'ecrit' you get some 'bases' or basic blocks, such as 'for teachers' or for students ('eleves')
- in alphabetical order:
RESCOL 1 - bases - Ressources pour le Collège en anglais - ESL Resources

Anyway, just try out the different sections and you'll find something!
RESCOL 1 - Ressources pour le Collège en anglais - ESL Resources
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Jay Doubleyou