Text VIII

“When I first lived in Saudi Arabia, I tended to answer questions in Arabic about my health (the equivalent of ‘ ‘How are you’?) with the equivalent of my familiar routine responses of ‘Okay’ or ‘Fine’. However, I eventually noticed that when I asked a similar question, people generally answered with a phrase that had the literal meaning of ‘Praise to God’. I soon learned to use the new expression, wanting to be pragmatically appropriate in that context. My first type of answer wasn't ‘wrong’ (my vocabulary and pronunciation weren't inaccurate), but it did convey the meaning that I was a social outsider who answered in an unexpected way.”

             (YULE, G. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. pp.5.)

Text VII

      The term ‘assessment literacy’ has been coined in recent years to denote what teachers need to know about assessment. Traditionally, it was regarded as the ability to select, design and evaluate tests and assessment procedures, as well as to score and grade them on the basis of theoretical knowledge. More recent approaches embrace a broader understanding of the concept when taking account of the implications of assessment for teaching. […] Knowing and understanding the key principles of sound assessment and translating those into quality information about students’ achievements and effective instruction are considered essential.

(BERGER, A. Creating Language ‐ Assessment Literacy: A Model for Teacher Education. In: HÜTTNER, J.; MEHLMAUER‐LARCHER, B.; REICH, S. (eds.)   Theory and Practice in EFL Teaching Education: Bridging the Gap. Multilingual Matters, 2012. pp.57‐82.)

Text VI.

                            Critical Discourse Analysis

      We have seen that among many other resources that define the power base of a group or institution, access to or control over public discourse and communication is an important "symbolic" resource, as is the case for knowledge and information (van Dijk 1996). Most people have active control only over everyday talk with family members, friends, or colleagues, and passive control over, e.g. media usage. In many situations, ordinary people are more or less passive targets of text and talk, e.g. of their bosses or teachers, or of the authorities, such as police officers, judges, welfare bureaucrats, or tax inspectors, who may simply tell them what (not) to believe or what to do.

      On the other hand, members of more powerful social groups and institutions, and especially their leaders (the elites), have more or less exclusive access to, and control over, one or more types of public discourse. Thus, professors control scholarly discourse, teachers educational discourse, journalists media discourse, lawyers legal discourse, and politicians policy and other public political discourse. Those who have more control over more ‒ and more influential ‒  discourse (and more properties) are by that definition also more powerful.

      These notions of discourse access and control are very general, and it is one of the tasks of CDA to spell out these forms of power. Thus, if discourse is defined in terms of complex communicative events, access and control may be defined both for the context and for the structures of text and talk themselves.

(van DIJK, T. A. Critical Discourse Analysis. In: SCHIFFRIN, D.; TANNEN, D.; HAMILTON, H. (eds.).   The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2003. pp. 352‐371.)

Text I

                       Critical Literacy and Foreign Language Education

      Understanding the basic principles of Critical Literacy is vital for establishing a viable relationship between EFL teaching and the general (critical) education of the individual. Critical literacy supporters conceive literacy in broader socio‐cultural and political terms. Critical literacy is mainly derived from post‐structuralism, critical social theory and critical pedagogy. From post‐structuralism, critical literacy has borrowed its methods of critique and the understanding of texts as ideological constructions embedded within discursive systems. Based on critical social theory, critical literacy sees texts as continually subjected to methods of social critique. Finally, because of the influence of critical pedagogy, critical literacy practices need to draw on social justice, freedom, and equity as central concerns. As I am discussing critical literacy and language education in Brazilian contexts, I will highlight the contributions of Paulo Freire's Critical Pedagogy. Freire's contributions to the conceptualization of critical literacy are fundamental, as critical literacy essentially determines a different attitude towards reading. Reading the word is not enough. As stated in Freire's work, reading the word and reading the world should be intrinsically related, as any text is embedded in comprehensive contexts of social, historical, and power relations that generate it. Moreover, the critical reading of the word within the world, and vice‐versa, is a tool for social transformation. Consequently, critical pedagogies to literacy centralize issues of social justice and emancipation. How does critical pedagogy enlighten the roles to be played by EFL teaching in the education, for example, about race relations?  

      A major concern of Freire's critical pedagogy as well as for other educators committed to critical forms of education is the development of "critical consciousness." Through critical consciousness, students should come to recognize and feel disposed to remake their own identities and sociopolitical realities through their own meaning‐making processes and through their actions in the world. Ultimately, critical literacy is an instrument of power and provides a possibility of transforming the society if the empowered individual wants to.

      Considering the status of English as a lingua franca, materials, especially those de‐signed by publishers in the US and UK, are used for organizing lessons around topics that can be included in classroom activities without causing discomfort, so that the same textbook series can be sold to different parts of the world. Some publishers even have lists of banned topics or rely informally on the acronym PARSNIP (politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms, and pork) as a rule of thumb.

      The convention of avoidance, then, is related to problems that tend to be purposefully neglected and are those that customarily are the most meaningful issues in real world students' lives. The avoided topics are also close to the ones suggested by OCEM as topics that should be present in Brazilian schools to promote critical literacy. Teachers of English, as well as any other teacher, face, in their daily teaching, educational challenges that go beyond the imagined protected spaces of schools and the imagined worlds portrayed in textbooks. What seems to be relevant in students' lives are not necessarily common topics included in EFL textbooks, such as ‘Mr. Smith's weekend' or ‘global warming', although these can be considered valid topics to be discussed in classrooms.

      Considering all these challenges, it is necessary to define the role of teacher education in this process. Teachers should be seen as transformative agents and their education should be focused upon this perspective. This encompasses the traditional contents of sociology of education, psychology of education, educational legislation and other subjects. But, the specific weight on ELT needs to entail criticism of current practices and suggestions for creating new ones.  

(JORGE, M. Critical literacy, foreign language teaching and the education about race relations in Brazil. In: The Latin Americanist, vol. 56, 4, December 2012, pp.  79‐90. Available in: https://www.academia.edu . Accessed on September 24th, 2014.)

                                             Smart Greenhouse

Control the light, watering, temperature, and humidity of your greenhouse – automatically.

                                                                                                                                  Kevin Farnham

      Smart Greenhouse, one of three professional category winner in the 2014 IoT Developer Challenge, is an Internet of Things (IoT) device and application that monitors and controls a greenhouse environment. The concept for Smart Greenhouse came into being after the core team – Dzmitry Yasevich, Pavel Vervenko, and Vladimir Redzhepov – attended JavaOne Russia in April 2013. There, the team saw presentations of a smart house, various robots, and other devices, all controlled by Java.

      Yasevich notes, “We were impressed by these solutions and had an idea to do something like that. Pavel Vervenko suggested making an automated greenhouse. Everyone liked the idea!”.

      First, the team selected the hardware. “We started to use Raspberry Pi as a basis”, Yasevich says. “It is a compact but fullfedged computer with 700 MHz and memory at 512 MB. This system costs around $35”.

      However, early on, a safety concern arose. “Current under high voltage passes in the greenhouse, and there is an automatic watering system, so it was necessary to properly consider all the aspects related to insulation”, Yasevich says.

(http://www.oraclejavamagazine-digital.com/8ef38d6e6f63e8971b9487ddb4bd4bdc/558dae0a/pp/javamagazine20150304-1429053481000c51ce41 0c1-pp.pdf?lm=1429053481000)