Free textbooks in California

California Takes a Big Step Forward: Free, Digital, Open-Source Textbooks

This week, California took a big step forward in the march toward online education. Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a proposal to create a website that will allow students to download digital versions of popular textbooks for free. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/california-takes-a-big-step-forward-free-digital-open-source-textbooks/263047/

 

On-line stuff

Hi everybody,
here's something interesting:
http://www.sindinero.org/blog/archives/2037

You will find some web-sites where you can learn English at home, on your own,and mostly for free.

Enjoy them

More BBC

An article from the BBC about Valencia... Res de bo...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19682049

Learning (English) with BBC

Hi everybody,
can you please check the BBC website, and tell me if you could only dream of having something similar in Spain:
Learning with BBC- learning on-line different topics.

Learning English on BBC.

We will come back to this soon.

Quique

This blog will soon come back to life...

Hi again,
I have in mind resuming my blog.
Since I will be working in FP, most of my students will have access to internet in the classroom. This is good, it will make me post stuff more eagerly.
Anyway, see you soon!
Quique

The importance of punctuation

Have a look at this:

The benefits of bilingualism

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

By YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE Published: March 17, 2012  NY Times

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=4

Quique