Are these statements true or false?

1. Capone’s parents were from Sicily in Italy.

2. He left school when he was 15.

3. He was a member of the Five Points Gang in New York.

4. He got married before he became a father.

5. His son was called Albert.

6. The people of Chicago first thought Capone was a hero.

7. His men killed Bugs Moran on St. Valentine’s Day.

8. He was sent to prison for financial crimes.

Activity 2

Answer these questions:

1. When was Capone born?

2. How many children did his parents have in total?

3. Why did he leave school?

4. How did he get the nickname ‘Scarface’?

5. What is bootlegging?

6. How old was he when he became the ‘boss’ of Chicago?

7. Who were The Untouchables?

8. How long was he sent to prison for?

9. When and where did he die?

Transcript

One of the most notorious criminals in American history is surely Alphonse Gabriel Capone, or more simply Al Capone. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17th 1899 although his parents were originally from Naples in Italy. He came from a large family, having six brothers and two sisters.

Capone’s life of crime started at an early age after he was expelled from school for seriously attacking one of his teachers. He was only 14. So instead of studying, he joined one or two small gangs before he joined one of the largest and most notorious in all of New York – the Five Points Gang. It was while in this gang that he had a knife fight with another gangster and his cheek was cut very deeply. This is how he got his most famous nickname, Scarface.

When he was 19 he became a father and soon after he married the young Irish woman who was the child’s mother. The baby boy was called Albert, but his nickname was Sonny. The next year Capone was sent to work in Chicago because the New York Police were looking for him in connection with two murders.

In Chicago he helped to organise bootlegging. This means that he distributed alcohol in the city even though alcohol was banned at the time. This was the Prohibition era and the bootlegging was a very good business for the gangsters. By the time Scarface was 26 he was controlling the biggest gang in Chicago. He had thousands of people working for him, and even had policemen and politicians on his ‘payroll’. He was even more powerful then the Mayor of Chicago. He was very popular with the local people and he helped many people who were in financial difficulty. They considered him as a kind of hero.

One of the most famous events in Chicago’s history was the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. Scarface wanted to eliminate a rival gang boss, Bugs Moran, so he sent his men disguised as police officers to their warehouse and killed seven of the gang. Bugs Moran was late for this particular meeting so he survived. However, this event helped to change the public’s opinion of Capone and he started to become less popular.

The police never officially found out who was responsible for these killings and so Scarface was not arrested. However, by this time he was officially Public Enemy Number One – another of his nicknames. The police still wanted to arrest him but could not link him to any of the crime in the city. Instead, the city called in a group of loyal and honest men from the Treasury department to investigate Capone’s finances. They were called The Untouchables and their leader was Elliot Ness. After a lot of investigating Capone was finally arrested for not paying his taxes and sentenced to eleven years in prison. Most of this time was spent in the famous prison, Alcatraz. He had a difficult time in prison and outside his business empire collapsed. This caused his mental health to suffer and he eventually went mad.

He tried to rebuild his business when he was released from Alcatraz but he failed, so he moved to Miami and retired. He died on 24th January 1947 from a stroke and was buried in Chicago between the graves of his father and brother.

http://www.eslpodcards.com/usa/brooklyn.php 07.07.09

The idea of my teaching project is to combine “classical” contents of the English classroom with the use of new media. The students are supposed to create a website about Shakespeare. This website has to contain information about the historical background (Early Modern Period) as well as presentations about Shakespeare and his plays. The project is designed for students of the Oberstufe, i.e. 12th or 13th grade.

In a first step the students are divided into groups. The idea is that every group creates a PowerPoint presentation about its topic. One group works on the time Shakespeare lived in, another group prepares a presentation about his life. Three other groups work on Shakespeare’s plays, each group presents one play. Perhaps Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet as well as Hamlet or Othello seem to be the most appropriate plays, since they are the most relevant ones for school. Preparing those presentations already demands lots of efforts and discipline.

In a second step the groups are asked to prepare the website. One group is responsible for the design of the website itself, this group uploads the previously prepared presentations  and designs an appealing website as well as a forum where every student is supposed to contribute his thoughts about the project. The other groups are asked to work on Shakespeare’s plays again, which means that they have to try to create little videos. In groups they might act out certain scences and film them or they might also search the internet in order to find different theatre adaptations. All the videos produced or found in the web should be posted on the homepage.

In a last step, every group presents its results in front of the whole class which means that they present their PowerPoint presentations and videos as well as the website itself. The website finally includes presentations about Shakespeare and his time, his major plays, videos of the favourite scenes as well as a forum. Depending on the time a teacher wants to spend on the project, the idea might even be enlarged.

Questions:

1) How do the older colleagues react to the use of New Media?

2) Do the teachers at the Alfred-Wegener-Schule think that the use of New Media improves the learning process?

Answers:

1) I found this question very interesting, since we have been talking about the problems with older teachers and the use of New Media during the seminar several times. I really wanted to know whether it is a prejudice or reality. Mr. Schuler, our “school guide”, told us that it is reality in many cases. Many older teachers do have problems to use New Media or to learn how they work. Although the idea is to include New Media in the syllabus, many older teachers  argue that they are too old to learn the use of New Media.

2) With this question I tried to investigate what the advantages of New Media are according to an experienced teacher. Mr. Schuler told us that New Media are especially useful in order to motivate the students. The huge variety of possibilities helps the teacher to include every student. Although it is not possible to say that learning becomes more efficient, it is certainly true that teaching has changed and it might become far more interesting for many students.

All in all, the field trip was really interesting, since it provided an insight into the use of New Media in school.

The project was designed for 8th grade students and it took 16 lessons. The topic of the project was “New York City” and it aimed at providing different language and methodological competences. After a first introduction the students had to form groups and find a topic connected to New York. During the next six lessons the students were asked to do some research on the internet and prepare a short PowerPoint prsesentation. After the presentation the teachers continued to take over the lessons and the whole teaching unit was concluded by a test.

I found this project particularly interseting, since it tried to teach media competences at an early stage. Students of the 8th grade already learn how to do research and how to prepare a PowerPoint  presentation. Besides, the whole teaching unit aimed at teaching a huge variety of competences and the teachers really tried to create an interesting teaching unit by choosing an interesting topic and by using a variety of methods, such as Presenting a topic, using songs, discussions, etc.

Teen talk focuses on listening comprehensions about various topics, such as school, food, hobbies, future, etc. It has to be mentioned that it is sometimes difficult to understand the different speakers, since they are all native speakers. On the other hand, this is also one of the advantages of the software, since it provides authentic language samples. Besides, it is usually possible to have a look at the written form of a spoken sample.The software provides interesting types of exercises, i.e. matching activities, etc. We liked the idea of training communicative skills by presenting authentic language but it is obvious that the software does not serve the purpose of teaching grammar, although it contains some grammar exercises. We think that the design of the software is good, since almost every piece of spoken language is usually accompanied by a little video of the speaker.

Lernpaket Englisch is a learning software designed for students of the 7^th grade. The different exercises can be chosen according to various fields of interest, such as family, shopping, etc. Besides, the learner has to choose a certain grammatical subject. One disadvantage of this software is the fact that the learner just has to click on different buttons instead of typing the answers himself in most cases. Besides, all the task descriptions, as well as the little games included in the software, are written in German. Another weak aspect of this software is the design of the exercises, which sometimes seem to be appropriate for younger students. A last difficulty we experienced was a technical problem, since the software announced a system error while it was running. The overall layout is ok and the software is well-structured. Besides, we liked the feedback functions, i.e. the statistics that show the learner which aspects of the language he has already mastered. The listening comprehensions in this software are easily understandable but sometimes the exercises get too easy since the software also offers some hints for finding the right solution.

We wouldn’t actually recommend the two softwares for the use in class, although some of the interviews of  Teen Talk might be used as a listening comprehension in school. One idea might be to act out the different interviews in class or to improve the listening comprehension skills by using some of the exercises from the software. Englisch Lernpaket might be useful for private use at home in order to improve the language skills but it does not seem to be appropriate as a tool in school education.

(in cooperation with Sophie Dröge)

http://alexandersperl.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/group2_task2.jpg

I’d like to comment on this poster, since the subject of drill and practice software seems to be quite interesting to me. I liked the idea of putting vocabulary learning on the pro site of the poster since nowadays, learning vocabulary by drill and practice is usually not accepted any more. Nevertheless, I still believe in that approach for vocabulary learning, although I know that there are other possibilities.

All in all I think that the group mentioned the most important advantages and disadvantages of drill and practice software, thus the content of the poster is good. One aspect that has to be criticised is the visualization of the poster, since the layout is not too attractive;-)

First of all, I think that new media play a major role in everyday life nowadays. New media are becoming more important every day and the younger generations grow up with a huge amount of influences from new media. Here is a nice little cartoon that illustrates this point:

Since new media are so important nowadays, they should also be used in school education. Learning materials and subject matters might become more accessible if they are taught in a more modern way. Students live with new media every day, therefore they might prefer teachers who include those media in their syllabus. Besides, I think that some methodological abilities in new media are simply required if you want to be taken serious by your students.

Another important aspect is to be found in many job advertisements. Almost every employer in the “Western World” demands abilities in programmes such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Therefore, those sudents who are not familiar with the use of computers have to expand their competences in school. Even the pupils that already have certain knowledge in the use of new media can benefit from such an education if the teacher provides new aspects of computer skills, especially in the field of internet research.

The use of new media can also help to create more interesting lessons. Especially teachers in foreign language education  might use the internet in order to provide authentic material. Videos on youtube, newspaper articles, etc are some of the examples a teacher might use in his lessons to confront the learners with authentic language. Perhaps one might even show his students an English/French/… chatroom and give them the task to get in touch with students from different countries, since communication is the most important aspect of the internet for many students.

Nevertheless, I also have to mention some disadvantages of the use of new media in school. A first problem is the technical aspect: technical problems might occur and even experts are not immune to such problems . Therefore, as a teacher it is always helpful to have an alternative in mind.

Besides, it is important to control your pupils if you work with them in a computer room. When I look back at my school days, I remember that I often used the time in a computer room to surf the web but I rarely did the tasks I was supposed to do. I had some teachers who really tried to include new media in their lessons but they seldom controlled what the students did.

To conclude, I would say that the use of new media in school is inevitabe nowadays. New media can help a teacher to design interesting lessons but a teacher also has to be aware of the difficulties that are combined with it.