English News

Informa  Gladys Lesmi Dallas, Coordinadora de Inglés de Middle & Senior:

Debate

Tras acumular varias victorias intercolegiales, los equipos del BDS están en los cuartos de final de la Copa anual de la Argentine Schools Debating Federation (ASDF). Felicitaciones y mucha suerte en los próximos desafíos a: Sofía Nicolini, Federico Vardé y Martín Orjales (Seniors ) y a Andrés Orjales, Manuel Irrarazaval y Lautaro Meiners (Juniors).

Literary Awards

Las «mmini-sagas» (cuentos brevísimos) de Alejandro Vacas, Daniela Andrade Lopes y Bernardo Sosa serán incluidas en una antología internacional de jóvenes escritores. Como sucediera años anteriores con otros alumnos del BDS, esta vez ellos han sido distinguidos con el Premio Publicación que otorga la editorial británica Young Writers. Sus trabajos, además, se publicarán completos en la edición 2009 del anuario institucional «The Evegreen«. Congratulations, young writers! Y vayan nuestras felicitaciones para el Depto. de Inglés en su conjunto.

ESSARP Educational Conference

Este evento anual internacional tuvo lugar en el Hotel Marriott Plaza el primer fin de semana de septiembre. La delegación de nuestro colegio fue nutrida, con diecisiete participantes en total (directivos, coordinadores y docentes de las tres secciones). Bajo el tema general 21st Century Education se abordaron temas relacionados con el uso de las TIC  (de los cuales se informa en nota aparte) y el bilingüismo. Escribe Gladys:

«The  Conference was a good opportunity to be together and discuss things that matter to us in relation to our professional development. We also discussed the role of technology. Master or Tool?

I found the lecture by Claudia Ferradas inspiring. Developing Critical Technological Literacy involves encouraging students to develop critical attitudes towards technology and its contents, empowering and helping them to become producers rather than simply users of technology and the language of the global community. It involves reflection on aspects such as site reliability, vested commercial interests or gender-marked or ethnically biased images.

How can we  teachers meet the challenge when we  are digital immigrants ? Hypertext reconfigures the reader, the author, narrative, the concept of text and publishing and its power.   It therefore affects teaching  as a whole (…)   Claudia also referred to «Intermediality», the blurring of traditionally ascribed generic and formal boundaries through the incorporation of digital media into all forms of cultural practice, and the presence of one or more media in the space and form of another medium. This has led to the creation of intermedial spaces in-between media and a proliferation of texts, inter-texts, hyper-texts, hyper-fictions, and acts of transmediality, multimediality, hypermediality and a bewildering blur of associated realities».

Connie Kamm´s lecture on Planning, Implementation & Monitoring was also  enriching. We reflected on how to «Weed the Garden» . What are we doing that is not positively impacting students´ learning processes? It was mentioned in this lecture  the importance of working as a team not only when planning but also when assessing the school progress in an specific area . We were shown how teachers got together and assessed a group of low achievers in the States so as to plan strategies to overcome the feeling of isolation some teachers felt when working their hearts out in the classroom. Weeding the garden daily has to do with that feeling of team commitment and enthusiasm after all!

Ilustran esta nota fotos de algunas de las asistentes del BDS al ESSARP Conference 2009.