Education against fanaticisms; pencils against guns.

Around the world, unfortunately, there are violent actions every day; some of them are criminal terrorist attacks against different types of social organizations, more or less well structured. The one carried out by three islamic integrists in Paris against the magazine Charlie Hebdo last week has caused a deep pain and disarray not just in France but all over Europe and the world.

However, at the same time, it has had the opposite effect those criminal minds expected: not just panic by solidarity and union of all types from people from different social, political or religious backgrounds as it could be seen in the huge anti-terror rally in Paris yesterday's afternoon, showing that pens and pencils can be stronger than weapons, love stronger than hatred.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/11/paris-france-anti-terror-rally-massive-show-unity?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

On the other hand, we must take conscious, as I said above, that these attacks are taken place all over the world almost daily. The terrible attack in the heart of Europe can't make us forget as the most cruel kidnapping of over 60 teenage girls from their school by the radical islamic group Boko Haram in the north of Nigeria; precisely, to show the world they are against education, particularly against the education of women.  These yihadists are fighting against our civilization which has developed (it still has to go on further, though) to base its laws on the Human Rights, on equality and education. They kill or kidnap women and girls to use them as slaves, in all senses, to the extreme of selling them or using them to carry bombs to kill others as we found out yesterday in horror:

Nigeria: 'Girl bomber' kills 19 people in Maiduguri market

It is so disgusting and painful!
Let us keep learning, contributing to a better informed, more transparent and fairer world as the best solution to so criminal fanatism, as Malala Yousafzai has been claiming since she was so young. Let's listen to her speech when receiving the Nobel Award for Peace in honour to her and to all girls and people who try hard every day to make this world a better place for every human being:

Malala's Nobel Peace Prize speech

Benjamin Franklin scholarship

Let's start the new year with a good news: the USA Embassy in Madrid, Spain, has presented its annual Benjamin Franklin scholarship or grant, which offers the opportunity for one or two students, 16-18 years old, in Spain to spend almost a month in the States, doing a great variety of activities as well as learning about North American values and way of living.

The stay will be in the summer institutes of Benjamin Franklin either in Wake Forest University, North Coroline, or Purdue University, Indiana, from June 27 to July 25, with other 43 students from all over the world, including 10 North-American.

You can find all the information in the following link:

http://spanish.madrid.usembassy.gov/es/educacion/bf2015.html

Deadline: February 27 18:00 hs.

Wake Forest University, North Caroline.

Purdue University, Indiana.

IES Francisco Ayala 1º Bachillerato Students' PLE blogs

For the first time this year, the English Department is teaching an Integrated Project to students of the flexible bilingual group of 1º Bachillerato, some study science others social science, for only an hour a week . In fact, this subject has been designed to contribute to complete the required time of exposure to English for the bilingual English-Spanish modality of Bachillerato.

The project, with the title Personal Learning Environment (PLE) for Learning to Learn, Increasing Autonomy and Improving Communicative and Digital Competences, has as main objectives to improve the key competences mentioned in an integrated way, particularly in the written code, and, at the same time, to learn to curate contents they consider relevant for their personal and academic expectations and share them with other teenagers.

We have been working for two months so far and, despite the technical difficulties caused by poor connection, I can see they are progressing as you can check visiting the blogs some of them have created:

Luisa & Maria's blog

Lucía & Pedro's blog

Javier & Joaquin's blog

Elena & Irene's blog

Andrea & Diego's blog

Álvaro & F. Javier's blog

Esteban & Iván's blog

May this Integrated Project help my students to develop their PLE

Why to learn English?

We love languages, they help people to think, to identify themselves, to express their feelings and emotions, to communicate and share ideas. It's great to learn languages, even neurologists recommend it as it can help to prevent or delay some mental disorders. 

Why should you learn English then? Could you think about at least 3 good reasons to learn this language? I'm sure most of you could. Perhaps your reasons coincide with the ones that wikipedia offers in Significance of English language. Check it!

We could tell you we have been learning for years because we like it, we can communicate internationally, and we can enjoy in a deeper way with cultures in English, not one, but many as it is the language of the United Kingdom, Ireland, The United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Malta, some Caribbean countries as Jamaica. 

Having the opportunity to read Shakespeare, Washington or John Irving, Poe, Keats, Austen, Dickens, Whitman, Wilde, V. Woolf, McCullers, Fitzgerald, Heminguay, Steinbeck, Gordimer, Coetzee, Follet and many other great writers is a pleasure you could enjoy. 

And what to say about science and technology, just imagine it!