Designing Teaching Materials for the Development of Conversation. The use of films in online environments.

Not all scholars are aware that successful foreign language teaching must be based on authentic language input, so that the proficiency level reached is appropriate to the initial goal set for our target cohort. Most textbooks haven’t got enough material with authentic or natural language. After all, we still expect students to reproduce grammatically correct sentences following a specific well-known grammatical rule. That is the main reason why the language we find in these books is rather “artificial”, something we cannot consider to be “daily language”. Teaching oral skills in a foreign language is a complex issue. For this reason, we propose film dialogues to be a more natural model of conversation than textbook dialogues. This paper is based on the most popular theories of spoken discourse analysis (Austin (1962), Searle (1969), Schmidt and Richards, (1980)), focusing on students’ familiarity with speech acts as essential components for them to be communicatively appropriate. Likewise, teachers’ updating is essential since they have to master both verbal and non-verbal language, discourse theories and their application to the teaching context. Thus, students have the opportunity to get more in touch with natural conversation. This proposal is focused on naturally occurring conversation and virtual learning. Methodology suggested is as follows: the teacher selects extracts leading to the subsequent design of activities. Later on, students will watch them, paying attention only to very specific aspects of language and culture previously discussed. It is understood that, if students are not fully guided or watch the whole film, they get lost or learn erratically. The aim of this type of activity is to reinforce students’ awareness of how native speakers behave and interact in their daily lives. A foreign language is a constantly changing activity, determined by many factors, which cannot be taught unless it is offered in the right context and through the right medium

Historical SDI, thematic maps and analysis of a complex network of medieval towers (13th-15th century) in the moorish strip

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-4, 2018 ISPRS TC IV Mid-term Symposium “3D Spatial Information Science – The Engine of Change”, 1–5 October 2018, Delft, The NetherlandsThis work is part of an investigation into the use of GIS for the documentation and comprehension of medieval architectural heritage in the ancient Kingdom of Seville. The research was done in the framework of the project “Sustainable guardianship of cultural heritage through digital BIM and GIS models: contribution to knowledge and social innovation”, an interdisciplinary project focused on the applications of information technology in architectural heritage in Spain. The study case of this paper is located in the Guadalquivir valley during the period between 13th and 15th centuries. It concerns the Moorish Strip site, fortified by the Christian Kingdom of Castile with the aim of creating a barrier with the Moorish Kingdom. Its deteriorated state has led us to create a historical and spatial database in order to contribute to its conservation management plan. Apart from the historical documentation research and the data gathering, intensive fieldwork was also done to collect information about the buildings. In this paper we present a Historical SDI to investigate the hypothesis that the spatial patterns of the Moorish Band obey rules of “inter-visibility” control. Some analysis has been done on the site scale, such as: i) a thematic map of building material; ii) a spatiotemporal analysis; iii) the density of the distribution of towers over the territory; iv) a simulation of the territory visibility from the towers; v) the inter-visibility among towers; iv) thematic maps using attribute values. These analyses permitted us to highlight the need to create a preservation plan that should consider the network visibility system as an important value for heritage interpretation and knowledge.Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness HAR2016–78113-

Instrumented activity and semiotic mediation: two frames to describe the conjecture construction process as curricular organizer

We document part of the process through which conjectures produced by students, with the aid of the dynamic geometry software Cabri, when they solve proposed geometric problems, become a curriculum organizer in the classroom. We first focus on characterizing students’ instrumented activity recurring to utilization schema (Rabardel, 1995, in Bartolini Bussi and Mariotti, 2008), and then describe the teacher’s content management through which the ideas produced by the students become key elements of knowledge construction

Analyzing the proving activity of a group of three students

We present an analysis and outline an evaluation of the proving activity of a group of three university level students when solving a geometrical problem whose solution required the formulation of a conjecture and its justification within a specific theoretical system. To carry out the analysis, we used the model presented by Boero, Douek, Morselli and Pedemonte (2010) that centers on the arguments and rational behavior. Our analysis indicates that the student‘s proving activity is close to the one we used as a reference

Dynamic geometry, implication and abduction: a case study

In this paper we illustrate the role of dynamic geometry as an environment that propitiates the use of empirical explorations to favor learning to prove. This is possible thanks to abductive processes, related to the establishment of implications that university students of a plane geometry course carry out when, supported by a dynamic geometry program, they solve a problem in which they must discover a geometric fact, formulate a conjecture and prove it

Use of dragging as organizer for conjecture validation

In this article, we report on a study centred on the teaching and learning of proof in which there is evidence that dragging becomes a source for significant student participation in the validation of conjectures. The findings highlight the teacher’s use of dragging as an organizer of the activity, in cases when there are conjectures that students consider acceptable but for which they do not have the theoretical elements to validate them

Assigning mathematics tasks versus providing pre-fabricated mathematics in order to support learning to prove

We present types of mathematics tasks that we propose to our students —future high school mathematics teachers— in a geometry course whose objective is learning to prove and whose enterprise is collectively building an axiomatic system for a portion of plane geometry. We pursue the achievement of the course objective by involving students in different types of tasks instead of providing them with pre-fabricated mathematics

Learning to prove: enculturation or…?

Empirical evidence coming from a curriculum innovation experience that we have been implementing in the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Colombia), in a plane geometry course for secondary mathematics pre-service teachers, allows us to affirm that learning to prove, more than enculturation into mathematicians’ practices, is participation in proving activity within the community of mathematical discourse

Laboratorio Urbano: las voces de la ciudad

Hablar de rehabilitación urbana es, necesariamente, hablar de la población que habita el espacio que va a ser rehabilitado. Si la participación ciudadana es importante en cualquier proceso que tenga consecuencias para la sociedad, se hace aún más evidente en los procesos de transformación urbana que afectan a espacios habitados