¿Por qué leer literatura infantil y juvenil?

Esta entrada la vamos a hacer en español. A través de este vídeo donde diferentes autores de literatura infantil y juvenil nos hablan de las razones para leer literatura para jóvenes, de todo lo que puede aportar este tipo de libros a los jóvenes lectores. También mencionan su obra favorita (donde destaca y de qué manera La Historia Interminable) y a través de este vídeo conocí la revista de literatura El Templo de las Mil Puertas.

Los autores destacan la capacidad de la literatura juvenil de crear lectores entre los jóvenes y de fomentar la imaginación pero también de proporcionar el placer de saborear una buena historia. Todos alaban la labor de la revista arriba mencionada. Detrás de ella está el joven autor Javier Ruesca, que ha publicado ya varios libros. De él y de Laura Gallego, que aparece en el vídeo, hablaremos pronto y haremos reseñas de sus libros. Hay muchas razones para hablar de estos dos jóvenes autores pero la principal me la dieron mis estudiantes. Les pregunté qué libros en español recomendarían ellos a lectores canadienses que estudiaran en una ISA. En un primer momento optaron por los clásicos El Lazarillo, La Celestina y El Quijote. Les dije que era su elección, no lo que ellos pensaban que yo pudiera elegir. Inmediatamente nombraron a estos dos jóvenes escritores. Y se trata de opiniones muy cualificadas.

Volviendo a la revista,  El Templo de las Mil Puertas nos da una visión amplia de la literatura infantil y juvenil en español y  de autores de muchos otros países. Autores consagrados, pero también noveles y autores olvidados. Hay enlaces a entrevistas con muchos de ellos y los lectores pueden participar enviando sus críticas y opiniones. Una gran fuente de información, al alcance de todos y con muchas referencias a las nuevas tecnologías, el autor tiene su propio canal de youtube y a través de él también contacta con sus lectores.

Ravitch: Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t)

A very interesting article by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post about education in Finland. Finland always gets "high marks" in the PISA reports in the three core subject tested: mathematics, reading and science. The article shows light about the way education is organized in Finland and gives answers to explain their excellent results. To me a key statement in the article is: Finnish students can get a good education in virtually any school in the nation. If this is true, and apparently it is, it speaks loudly about the quality and consistency of the educational system in Finland. By the way, an educational system which is almost trilingual, Finnish, Swedish, English and this fact doesn't lower students' achievement levels in the core subjects, on the contrary.

The article: Click

More information about the PISA, Program for International Student Assessment, exams.

Prezi, a useful tool for doing presentations

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. Prezi is free software, you just need to supply an educational e-mail address and teachers and students can create an account and create their presentations. Because presentations are stored in the cloud, you can share them with other educators and, of course, have access to numerous educational presentations.

The interface is very intuitive and the website offers different webinars which explain step by step how to start creating your own presentations and to make them more and more complicated. Prezi has recently added a tool which allows users to import their previous power point presentations. To sum up, a very interesting tool to work with and share presentations with other educators. It can be very useful for students to create their own projects.

More information about prezi: Here. The tutorials are also available in youtube:

Once you create your own account you will have access to many presentations that can illustrate all the possibilities this program offers. If you prefer to have a look a one presentation without creating your account, here is an example.

SM Publishing House's Awards 2012

I have already talked about all the information about authors and books for children and young people that we can gather revising the winners of the different literary awards. One of the best known awards is the Barco de Vapor Children´s Literature Prize, which is awarded by publishing house SM. SM also awards the Gran Angular Young People´s Literature Prize and the Jordi Sierra i Fabra award for young writers. The winners in 2012 were:

El Barco de Vapor Children's Literary Prize 2012, Catalina Gonzlez Villar for "El secreto del huevo azul".

El Gran Angular Award Young People´s Literature Prize, to Jesús Díez de Palma for "El festín de la muerte".
The Jordi Serra i Fabra award for young writers to Alba Quintas Garciandias for "Al otro lado de la pantalla". It is important to point out that this writer is just 17 years old and her book is about bullying in school using computers.

The three winners speak about their books:

Normally all the books that appear in both collections Barco de vapor and Gran Angular have free online resources available for the teachers who decide to use them in their classes. Click here. Something we can take advantage of.

EDMODO, a very useful tool

One of the tools that can help the success of a bilingual program is the use of a reliable Virtual Learning Environment or Learning Management System. There are numerous possibilities available and more often than not, schools or school districts have one of these environements available for teachers. Students are familiar with these tools and it shouldn't be so difficult to engage them to use the platform that we have chosen.

In the event that the school doesn't offer one platform to their teachers my suggestion is Edmodo. Edmodo is a social learning network  for teachers, students and parents and has an interface very similar to Facebook. Students won't have any difficulty to navigate through the site, read and do the teacher's assignments or be in contact with the rest of the class. The site allows to upload files and from today "Google Docs has been integrated into Edmodo: "This highly requested feature allows you to sync your Google Docs with your Edmodo Library so you can easily access and share your Google Docs with your Edmodo groups."

Signing in is free and, as I already mentioned, Edmodo is flexible and very simple to use. The interface comes in different languages, among them Spanish. It also allows teachers to be in contact with other teachers and it makes very simple to do online projects together with a partner school. To sum up, a working tool that can be be very helpful to make a bilingual program thrive.