English Speaking club - the Peace Corp

Today our guests were 6 Americans, Peace Corps volunteers working in Dnipropetrovsk city and oblast.   

The guests introduced themselves to the Ukrainian club members, explained the aim of their visit to Dnipropetrovsk, told about their pupils and activities in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian University lecturers and the Americans exchanged their experiences about difficult moments in teaching process.

The volunteers clearly enjoyed the meeting with the WOA’s Ukrainian patrons and promised to prepare presentations about their home states for the ESC members.

The second part of the WOA’s English Speaking Club session was dedicated to American inventors. We decided to present to the audience the famous USA inventors with Slavic roots.

The presentation started with the brief history of Nicola Tesla, the genius and inventor of the AC (alternating current) and many other things.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5uiK_QnyrE

The second inventor in the presentation was the father of the helicopter, Igor Sikorsky. Sikorsky was born in Kiev under the Russian Empire and is considered to be the national talent both in Ukraine and Russia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YHlBq3pW7I

The third person presented was the inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper. Mr. Cooper’s parents were immigrants from Ukraine. Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first portable handset and the first person to make a call on a portable cell phone in April 1973.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPOzjFDbIKc

The information about the inventors was illustrated with the relevant videos via YouTube.

An article about accidental food inventions was found quite useful – about the origin of Popsicle, chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and coca-cola.

The on-line quizzes are one of the favorite activities with the club members. Today’s BBC on-line quiz about last centuries’ inventions was a big success and brought about several bursts of laughter – the objects on the photos happened to be some bizarre inventions. We did not score much – only 4 out of 10, but had some fun guessing the correct answers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7556528.stm   strange inventions !!!

http://science.discovery.com/tv/how-do-they-do-it/quiz/quiz.html  true or false invention

http://www.squidoo.com/who-invented-it - famous inventions by who

The CBS and Times magazine videos about the best inventions of 2008 and 2009 were very informative.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l53gGkvuyoE&feature=related

To conclude the session we gave the opportunity to all the present to tell about their own inventions in everyday life. The professional engineers have not disclosed any info, but humanitarians shared some fun facts – how to make a soup out of the leftovers of a quiche, how to make nice photos of oneself without other people help, etc.

Have a look at more pictures, please ;-)

The number of the visitors –28.