Γενικά
Collaborative learning
Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.). More specifically, collaborative learning is based on the model that knowledge can be created within a population where members actively interact by sharing experiences and take on asymmetry roles. Put differently, collaborative learning refers to methodologies and environments in which learners engage in a common task where each individual depends on and is accountable to each other. These include both face-to-face conversations and computer discussions (online forums, chat rooms, etc.). Methods for examining collaborative learning processes include conversation analysis and statistical discourse analysis.
Thus, collaborative learning is commonly illustrated when groups of students work together to search for understanding, meaning, or solutions or to create an artifact or product of their learning. Further, collaborative learning redefines traditional student-teacher relationship in the classroom which results in controversy over whether this paradigm is more beneficial than harmful. Collaborative learning activities can include collaborative writing, group projects, joint problem solving, debates, study teams, and other activities. The approach is closely related to cooperative learning.
For more information read the following article
Collaborative learning (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
or watch the following video
[teachertube collaborative-learning-186234]
World Poetry Day
The following link leads to posts about World Poetry Day which is currently dedicated to Lord Byron, a famous English poet who stood by the Greeks during their revolution against the Ottomans.
World Poetry Day Digital Lesson: http://blnds.co/1ph0ThB
Season’s greetings
Have A Great Time As You Go Back To School!
Have lots of fun at school
and you’ll be sure to do all right,
you’ll make new friends and learn a lot,
your whole year will be bright.
Enjoy Yourself!
Getting the 1st prize at the 5th English on the Spot Festival
Our students’ fantastic performance fascinated the critics in yesterday’s music competition at the 5th English on the Spot Festival. El. Tsourlaki, M. Salvaraki, Ag. Tournaki, Chr. Apostolaki got the 1st prize by singing their own fabulous song entitled “DREAM 4.2/KISS IT BETTER”, in which they used the mash up technique according to which a song or composition can be created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the instrumental track of another.
Watch the YouTube video of the song: DREAM 4.2/KISS IT BETTER
Read the lyrics: DREAM 4.2/KISS IT BETTER
Celebrating May Day
Like Candlemas, Lammas and Halloween, May Day is one of the corner days which fall between the solar festivals of the year (the equinoxes and solstices). The ancient Celts called this holiday Beltane and began celebrating at sunset on April 30th. It marked the beginning of summer, time to move with the flocks up to the summer pastures.
Alexander Carmichael, a 19th century amateur folklorist, describes the annual procession to the summer pastures in language which reminds me of more contemporary summer pleasures, like summre camp, summer vacations, summer cabins:
On the first day of May the people of the crofter townland are up betimes and busy as bees about to swarm. This is the day of migrating, bho baile gu beinn (from townland to moorland), from the winter homestead to the summer sheiling. The summer of their joy is come, the summer of the sheiling, the song, the pipe and the dance, when the people ascend the hill to the clustered bothies, overlooking the distant sea from among the fronded ferns and fragrant heather, where neighbour meets neighbour, and lover meets lover.
Get some more information from The School of the Seasons website.
Easter Day by Oscar Wilde
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’
Oscar Wilde
Get some information about him
World Poetry Day
World Poetry Day is on 21 March, and was declared by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1999. The purpose of the day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to “give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements”.
It was generally celebrated in October, sometimes on the 5th, but in the latter part of the 20th Century the world community celebrated it on 15 October, the birthday of Virgil, the Roman epic poet and poet latter under Augustus. The tradition to keep an October date for national or international poetry day celebrations still holds in many countries. It is the first Thursday in October in the UK. Alternatively, a different October or even November date is celebrated.
In order to celebrate this day we have decided to podcast W. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day”, along with giving some information about the poem.
Spring Poetry
Sonnet 98
by William Shakespeare (1609)
From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
A Poem About New Year’s Eve
In Memoriam
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
