Kamis, 29 November 2012

English Lessons (playlist) VOWELS AND DIPHTONGS

ICT in Education

ICT in Education

Information and communication technologies in education 


deal with the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) within educational technology.
ICT in education means implementing of its equipment in teaching and learning process as a media. The purpose of ICT in education is to generally make students familiar with its use and how it works.
ICT in education can be broadly categorized in the following ways as:
  • ICT as a subject (i.e., computer studies)
  • ICT as a tool to support traditional subjects (i.e., computer-based learning, presentation, research)
  • ICT as an administrative tool (i.e., education management information systems/EMIS)
  • ICT as a medium of knowledge exchange

By country

India

In India, ICT is being emerging field of researches in education. In the field of Open and Distance Education it is being widely utilized.
It is being offered as an undergraduate and graduate level courses in Dhirubhai Ambani-Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT).
DA-IICT offers a unique four-year undergraduate Program leading to the degree of Bachelor of Technology (Information and Communication Technology). The Program aims to prepare students to either pursue a professional career immediately after graduation or to continue with postgraduate studies either in India or abroad.[1]
Master of Technology (Information and Communication Technology) This Program is primarily research-oriented and designed to satisfy the demands of industry for innovative solutions. [2]

Australia

In Australia, ICT is not a subject until the middle two years of schooling (Stage 5). In NSW, students are offered Information and Software Technology as a two year project-based elective and as well as Photographic and Digital Media as an Art elective. In the senior final two years (Stage 6) a number of computing subjects are offered: Software Design and Development (Programming), Information Processes and Technology and Industrial Technology (Multimedia) .[3] In Victoria, children start ICT in Prep but are not reported upon until they are in Year 1. They undertake a wide range of activities using technology to learn in all curriculum areas.[4]

Kenya

In Kenya, ICT is not taught as a subject in primary school. It is taught as an added advantage to some schools. In high school, the ICT is an optional subject. In the university level students are offered several options to choose from. One may either take Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Bachelor of Business Information Technology or Bachelor of Science in Computing Technology. All these courses are inter-related in terms of course work but differ in the majors that a student wants to take or Master.

Norway

In Norway, ICT is a course which students can select for their second year of upper secondary school. From pre-school to Year 10, ICT is interwoven throughout the curriculum as part of the Essential Learning of Communication.

Philippines

Other countries, such as the Philippines, also have integrated ICT in their curriculum. The Curriculum Development Division (CDD) of the Bureau of Elementary Education trained teachers from all over the country how to produce Computer Assisted Instructional Materials (CAIMs) in Math, Science and English subjects. Then CDD distributed the materials produced by the teacher participants to schools nationwide. As early as pre-elementary education in some schools, pupils are having their computer subjects. Other non-computer degree courses in tertiary also incorporated Computer Technology as part of their curriculum.
Being able in the world of ICT means you can do simple tasks as messaging your ICT/EdTech professor the Four (4) EdTech topics you've encountered on the Cookie Trail on Facebook Message, once correct you will receive a confirmation.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a subject in education, and a part of the National Curriculum. Most students can choose to study Information and Communication Technology to GCSE level.
The ICT programme in the United Kingdom was co-ordinated by Becta until 2011. A major initiative was the Curriculum Online scheme, which was closed in 2008 and which was produced to accelerate the uptake of technology amongst schools. Becta took over the running of this scheme from the Department for Education and Skills in 2005. Becta worked closely with the Joint Information Systems Committee to develop strategy.
Students are taught to use software such as office suites, desktop publishers; they are also taught about ICT theory, and how ICT can be used to solve problems. Computer programming is not taught at GCSE level.
Students also study the Data Protection Act, the Computer Misuse Act, and other legal and ethical issues related to ICT.
Many schools have specialist school status in technology and, more recently, in maths and computing, and these schools champion the use of ICT to enhance teaching and learning.[5]
Within Scotland and the North East of England a pilot enterprise in education initiative[6] aims to use ICT as a vehicle to encourage creative thinking within the youth demographic. Tapping into the 'unconstrained' minds of the region's young people, the programme simulates the process of taking a new innovative ICT idea through the commercialisation process. The competition is sponsored by Microsoft and BT and hopes to expand its reach throughout the UK in 2009/10.

ICT article: Knowledge Leadership

Abstract
One of the most important concerns of contemporary organizations is the effective use of current knowledge within an organization. The knowledge which is produced in organization or enters it through different channels should make a kind of value or so called "value creation". There have been many efforts in this regard from content management to the implementation of web-based technologies all lead to value creation, but the essence of most of them and the essential requirement for the realization of making value is competent management. Knowledge leadership is an appreciable and undeniable requirement for organizations and without a capable manager who is enough capable in directing knowledge creating efforts and activities; we may not receive real and sensible results. This article has discussed the requirements and kinds of knowledge manager with a scientific-promotional perspective while describing knowledge management and its value creative role in organizations.

Keywords:Knowledge Leadership, Knowledge Leader, Value Creation, Organization

1. Introduction
If knowledge management was a remarkable issue for discussion in think tanks for some time ago, now knowledge leadership is a notable story and has attracted thinkers who work on management and information services fields. Of course, these issues are not separated from each other and in many aspects overlap each other. Knowledge leadership indicates significant challenges which have been dealt with by managers in recent years. Today it is completely probable that no other factor may have great impact and initiate fundamental changes more than value creation. The convincing evidence for this claim is the increasing interest of organizations in finding new ways to achieve more values and benefits for their organizations.
Nowadays knowledge has become the key economic resource of organizations while material assets, human and natural resources are regarded as secondary resources. This new approach is completely visible in knowledge-based organizations.
Besides, communication media developments have made valuable knowledge accessible not only to a handful number of senior managers within an organization, but also to many executives in numerous companies. In the past time, highly ranked managers of organizations concentrated their attention on long term scope and main decisions, while today impressive knowledge is being produced and distributed more and more by a knowledge system which is comprised of knowledge workers in every company. So, a new generation of knowledge-based organizations is emerging which may be called value creator organizations [1].

2. What are value creator organizations?
A value creator organization provides unparallel knowledge leadership for its clients to deal with unpredicted challenges. We mean maintaining a competitive situation among competitor organizations for producing and achieving commercial knowledge by "unparallel knowledge leadership". This is the cause of superiority for an organization in producing goods or making services especially in critical and challenging times.
Enhancing clients' comprehension of enterprise and economical conditions in post-industry era needs human-dependant knowledge work and integrated service operations require all of the efforts of a value creator organization. This leads to clients' loyalty with the organization in long time. Constant flaw of challenges makes the organization's authorities busy with study and research to find new ways for dealing with clients' changing needs. In this way, value creator organizations empower their knowledge potential unintentionally and this makes their reliability more than before in their client's eye-view.
Improving performance, productivity and increasing production capacity and workers' satisfaction all are other objectives pursued by a value creator organization. Therefore value creator organizations more than everyone can be attractive for industrial and productive companies, because these organizations pay attention exactly to those priorities which are important for industrial bodies. The considerable point is that value creator organizations can offer the required frameworks for industrial companies in the form of software packages. So, formal knowledge changes into practical knowledge for these companies. This is that the question usually asked by knowledge economists as: "can knowledge be sold as a good?" has a positive response through a practical methodology.
The real meaning of value creator organizations reveals when these kinds of organizations take the responsibility of instruction in industrial companies and teach active human resources in these companies based on flexible marketing strategies. Value creator organizations usually pursue three main objectives in the aspect of instruction: A) Offering new commercial perspectives to learners so that their business intelligence may increase; B) Deepening organizational thought and business management and C) Encouraging collogues and teammates to share their knowledge with each other [1].

3. Who is a knowledge manager?
Doubtlessly knowledge managers are new form of organization managers. These managers are not included exactly within traditional organization charts. These managers often are found in internal nodes of organizations and just on common borders between units and subunits of organizations. Command and control positions are not usually without these kinds of managers.
Offering a definition for knowledge manager requires an acceptance and a realistic comprehension of this title. It also requires that an intellectual remind the responsibilities of a knowledge manager based on the development of functions and knowledge management solutions when he or she hears this term. The question which arises here is that "do we really need knowledge leadership?" or "what kind of knowledge leadership do we need?" Through knowing knowledge leaders types, we may be able to present an accurate definition for each kind of managers based on their roles and according to our organization need.
In a multi-aspect study conducted by Delphi Group, it was revealed that knowledge leader may cover a vast domain of organization posts and embrace similar functions and attributes [1]. The most remarkable attribute is a mixed experience of business and information technology, something that needs an experience of at least ten years in each field. Organizational thinking and interest in a level of enterprise that development is one of its inevitable consequences, is another necessary requirement. These leaders should consider current relations in organization hierarchical levels and meanwhile strengthen informal networks for building and maintaining informal and hidden organizations. Through these channels knowledge leaders may be able to introduce new methods and systems for the encouragement of researchers to compete with knowledge providers.
Why do organizations need knowledge leaders? The need is completely obvious because they should overcome natural barriers over knowledge sharing in big enterprise environments. This is in fact the essence of knowledge management. Organizations in every size and expertise believe that experience sharing and not only the application of technology is in the heart of knowledge management abilities for realizing commercial objectives and meeting clients and users' needs. This is usually done in open cultures through empowering communication channels. Knowledge leadership is needed to accelerate the establishment of required environment for knowledge sharing.
To prove this claim, it should be noted that knowledge leaders who were emerged more distinguishing than others showed special characteristics such as: knowledge gathering skills, organizing, classification and organizational relationship building. Meanwhile, they were equipped with other advanced skills such as information technology for succeeding in their business [2]. Although it is impossible for organizations today to make their knowledge influential without using information and communication technologies, it is always expected for managers to be capable of essential management skills and bring web-based communications along with face to face negotiations.

4. Types of knowledge leaders
Many organizations have taken the step of appointing a highly visible figure, the chief knowledge officer (CKO), to leverage the collective mind of an enterprise. This approach is the subject of many knowledge leadership discussions. Although there are a number of organizations with a CKO in place, this phenomenon is only one of several approaches in practice today to instill knowledge leadership. Many organizations have embraced knowledge leaders, but they have such titles as knowledge analyst, knowledge manager and knowledge steward. These individuals function very differently than the CKO and often express strong opinions against a central point of knowledge ownership.
The knowledge analyst is responsible for collecting, organizing and disseminating knowledge, usually on demand. Knowledge analysts provide knowledge leadership by becoming walking repositories of best practices - a library of how knowledge is shared and should be shared across the organization. The liability, of course, is that knowledge analysts can easily take all of the best practices with them if they leave the organization. There is also a risk that these individuals become so valuable to the immediate constituency that they are not able to move laterally to other parts of the organization where their skills are equally needed
The knowledge manager is responsible for coordinating the efforts of engineers, architects and analysts. The knowledge manager is most often required in large organizations where the large number of discrete knowledge-sharing processes risk fragmentation and isolation. The knowledge manager provides coordination across processes within a business unit. The risk in having knowledge managers is that fiefdoms (albeit large ones) may form around the success of each manager's domain. Regardless of this pitfall, the knowledge manager may successfully fill the niche of knowledge leader in an organization that realizes the lack of coordination in each of its business units is a primary deterrent to the sharing of knowledge among employees.
However, this single business unit approach can present its own problems in the form of fragmentation of knowledge. In these cases, the organization often relies on a central, command- and-control knowledge leader to provide continuity across multiple, discontinuous groups of knowledge workers.
The chief knowledge officer is responsible for enterprise-wide coordination of all knowledge leadership. The CKO typically reports to or is chartered by the CEO. Although it would seem reasonable that the CKO be part of IT (perhaps reporting to the CIO), this is not often the case. The CKO is not tasked with ownership of the technology infrastructure but rather the methods, practices and content comprising knowledge management solutions. At present, this role is almost always a solo performer with little, if any, staff and no immediate line-of-business responsibility. The CKO role requires advanced knowledge of the collective repositories, skills and expertise that can, if properly matched to the needs of the organization, increase responsiveness to customers (internal and external) and suppliers, which ultimately provides competitive distinction.
Putting a CKO in place is a potential point of sub-optimization. You may end up with someone whose vision of knowledge management dilutes the effectiveness of managing knowledge in each of the particular business units, projects or teams. Instead, these groups need to find the best way to manage knowledge within their area. By its nature, knowledge management is driven by lines of business (LOBs) and people at the extremities of the organization. Therefore, the best you can hope to do is coordinating the knowledge management process, but not truly control it. Because of this, a single knowledge leader, across all lines of business, is tough for LOB managers to support.
The knowledge steward is responsible for providing minimal, but ongoing, support to knowledge users in the form of expertise in the tools, practices and methods of knowledge management. The steward is in the most precarious and most opportunistic of positions. Usually, he or she is an individual who has fallen into the role of helping others to better understand and leverage the power of new technologies and practices in managing knowledge. The term "steward" best resonated in the interviews with the study participants; it conveys responsibility and a willingness to guide others, yet it is also non-intrusive and the near antithesis of ownership [2].

5. Conclusion: What is Your Organization's Need?
Knowledge leaders are educators of best practices and stewards of the frameworks that facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. But they are not owners. Knowledge leadership builds the bridges. Organizational leadership builds the culture. It is the knowledge workers themselves who build the reasons to use knowledge management.
CKO, knowledge manager, architect or steward - how does an organization identify the optimal style of knowledge leadership for its needs? Your vice president of customer care or manager of systems and applications may be your unsung knowledge leader. It may be there is no one. Look at the state of your organization's knowledge sharing, the level of sponsorship for knowledge leadership and the receptivity of its culture today. Then act accordingly. For instance, it would be a mistake to put a CKO into an organization that has little executive interest in knowledge management and where LOB managers exhibit a fundamental mistrust of one other. A CKO cannot make up for pathology of poor communication and mistrust.
There is little doubt that knowledge leadership is an essential ingredient of competition in the next millennium. Begin now to nurture these roles in your organization. Chances are, whatever their titles, you already have knowledge leaders at work that, with a bit of sponsorship, would be ready, able and very willing to step into the role.



References:
1. Knowledge Leadership: Leveraging Knowledge That Creates Value. Last time visited at: http://www.pepitone.com/content/know.asp
2. Stacie Capshaw and Thomas M. Koulopoulos, "Knowledge Leadership", DM Review Magazine, Last time visited at: http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=20

ICT Direct

ICT Direct, who sell refurbished business-standard computers to schools at a fraction of their original cost, will be demonstrating an innovative and exciting project on its stand at the BETT Show, called “Project Touch”.
Visit ICT Direct now!“Project Touch” is a multi-touch table that ICT Direct are developing in-house using all their own equipment. At its most basic, it is a PC projected onto a screen within a table, which is then operated by touch. It is very much like an oversized tablet.
ICT Direct will demonstrate how their refurbished PCs are powerful and robust enough to run this complex system, which will be running on the new Windows 8 operating system. People visiting the stand at the BETT show will be able to have full hands-on experience of this equipment, looking at imagery, videos and many other things.
The team on the stand will explain how “Project Touch” was built and more importantly encourage Design Technology departments in schools to undertake this innovative and very interesting project for themselves, by providing detailed instructions on the building of it, a full parts list and video demonstrations.
John Graham, Director at ICT Direct commented, “Teachers will be able to see just how simple it really is to build one of these systems. We believe by using all our own equipment we will be able to build this system for less than £400. Compared to other similar systems on the market which retail at around £6,000, this really is a remarkable achievement.”
ICT Direct will also reveal the challenges they faced in researching, designing and building “Project Touch”. Details on the applications which can be used on “Project Touch” will also be given during the show. In the lead up to the BETT show, ICT Direct will be posting tweets at @ict_direct and sending out tasters of what to expect via their own website and newsletters as well as through the Edugeek.net forums.
John concluded, “We are determined to build some real momentum as we get closer to the show, so visitors are keen to become a part of this stimulating project. We think it will be a great way for schools to engage with their pupils and motivate them to become involved in building something that holds real interest for their pupils as well as has a real benefit for the school.”
For further details about ICT Direct or “Project Touch” please visit the website at www.ict-direct.co.uk or call 01254 820980. Make sure you visit ICT Direct on Stand C324 at the BETT Show, from 30th January – 2nd February 2013 at Excel, London.
This article has been sponsored by ICT Direct.

7 ways of making ICT more attractive

You may not know this, but there is not a lot of difference between a Lee Oskar diatonic harmonica (the type used by blues and folk musicians) and a Hohner Blues Band harmonica. The Lee Oskar is said to have been engineered to give  a “sharper” edge to the tone, which suits the blues sound, whereas the Marine Band, being slightly “softer”, works well for folk music too. Unless you’re a purist, there is probably not much in it. As someone once said:
“A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference.”
"Harping the blues", by Alan Levine http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/So how else does Lee Oskar harmonica differentiate itself from the (as far as I know) more famous Hohner? It includes something in the box which is incredibly useful: a single sheet of paper that explains, amongst other things, the different “positions” you can play in. For example, playing a C harmonica in the key of C is known as “first position”, whereas playing it in the key of G is known as “second position”. (If you’re desperate to learn more about such arcane matters, check out the aptly named “Positions” web page.)
So what has any of this have to do with ICT?
A big challenge for ICT Co-ordinators/e-Learning Co-ordinators/Technology Co-ordinators has tended to be inducing teachers in other subjects to use the school’s technology. I think that is probably becoming easier, because the technology these days is so easy to use and attractive. But the challenge is by no means a thing of the past.
You may not be able to change the technology itself (in the short term), but there are certainly ways to make using it more attractive. The sheet of paper included with the Lee Oskar harmonica would be enough to tip the buying decision in its favour if the marginal difference in tone compared to the Hohner  is unimportant and the price is about the same. Why? Because it makes life easier. You have the convenience of having the information right there, instead of having to find a web page or a book, and then print it off or photocopy it. It’s not much of a difference, but it’s enough.
So, thinking about promoting the use of educational technology in the same way as promoting any other product or service, what kind of little extras could make the difference between a colleague choosing to use it or ignore it? Here are seven suggestions:
  • Include instructions. Don’t assume that everyone knows, for example, how to use a digital camera. Sometimes I offer to take people’s photos in front of a tourist attraction, and if they say “yes” I do sometimes have to check that the button I think is the shutter button really is the shutter button!
  • Include suggestions or tips about using it. Sticking with the digital camera example, a simple list of ways to avoid camera shake when standing or crouching could be quite handy.
  • Include a “Did you know” sheet. If you loan out a laptop or tablet, a sheet with things like “Did you know there is such-and-such an app on this device? Just go to …” could enthuse people enough to want to further explore its uses.
  • Make sure it’s easy to use or book the facilities in the first place. Not many people enjoy the prospect of spending their lunch break trying to find the one person in the school that has the key to all things digital. In this day and age, I don’t see why all resources cannot be booked online.
  • Help! Reluctant teachers will always feel reassured if they know where they can go for help. Are there digital leaders in the school they can approach, or a help desk they can ring? Some schools have adopted the Apple idea of a genius bar, a sort of drop-in facility where you can come along and ask for something to be fixed or for some general advice. How about setting up one of those?
  • Include a sheet giving examples of how it could be used in different subjects.
  • Include a sheet listing useful websites related to using it in an educational context.
I’m sure there are many more ways to make the idea of using ICT even more attractive. There is no need for any of your colleagues, or you, to be singing the blues!

semantics: relational opposites





RELATIONAL OPPOSITES : CONVERSENESS


A quite different kind of 'opposite' is the pairs of words which exhibit the reversal of a relationship between items (or ARGUMENT), e.g. buy/sell, husband/wife. If John sells to Fred, Fred buys from John; if Bill is Mary’s husband, Mary is Bill’s wife. This includes verbs (buy/sell, lend/borrow, rent/let, own/belong to, give/receive), nouns (husband/wife, fiancé/fiancée, parent/child, debtor/creditor), terms of spatial position (above/below, in front of/behind, north of/south of), active and passive in grammar (if Tom hits Harry, Harry is hit by Tom).
Terms involved in relational opposition may be transitive, but they cannot be symmetric. Relational opposites involve two relations (if the picture is above the table and the table above the carpet, the picture is above the carpet; also below). Symmetric relations hold between the arguments in both directions, so that only one term, not two, is required (married to, beside, meet).
Kinship terms are especially interesting in a discussion of relational opposites for two reasons:
  1. Many of them indicate not only the relationship, but a different sex (father/mother, son/daughter, uncle/aunt). John is Sam's father does not entail that Sam is John's son. Sam could be his daughter. There are also pairs of words that would be symmetric were it not for their indication n of sex (brother/sister). John is Sam’s brother does not entail Sam is John’s brother (she might be his sister). Only a small number of terms in English do not indicate sex (cousin "symmetric", parent/child "relational opposites).
  2. Whether a term is symmetric or not is a matter of the language. (Be married to is symmetric in English because it does not indicate sex, but in many languages where the active form of the verb is used for husband and the passive for the wife "marries/is married"). Similarly, many languages have no symmetric term "cousin"; the sex has to be indicated in these languages, or the precise relationship of the parents.
Spatial and Temporal relations: are not related as relational opposites, but differ in spatial direction and hold temporal relationships. "Ask and offer" may expect "reply and accept", but the 'expectation' may not be realized. But reply and accept 'presuppose' that there has been an act of asking or giving.
The 'true' gradable antonyms can be handled in terms of relational opposites) wide can be seen as wider than the norm; if a is wider than b, b is narrower than a). The comparative forms (the explicitly gradable ones) "wider and narrower" are relational opposites. They are, moreover, transitive  (if a is wider than b and b is wider than c, a is wider than c), but not symmetric or reflexive. However, as wide as, as narrow as, etc.; are symmetric, transitive and reflexive. (source: educationcing.blogspot.com)

Relational Antonyms are kind of like complementary antonyms because they are “either/or” words.  The difference is that a relationship must be present between the two words.  One exists only because the other does.
(If someone wins, someone must lose; if there is a fraction, there must be a whole.)
above                    below
all                          nothing
asleep                   awake
beginning               end
behind                   ahead
buy                       sell
east                       west
floor                      ceiling
front                      back
give                       get
hello                      goodbye
high                       low
hunter                   prey
husband                wife
lead                      follow
               leave                      arrive
               left                         right
               lend                       borrow
               lock                       unlock
               lost                         found
               north                      south
               offense                  defense
               open                      close
               output                    input
               parent                    child
               slave                      master
               to                           from
               top                         bottom
               trap                        release
               up                          down



segmental phoneme



I. Introduction
Segment (linguistics)
In linguistics (specifically, phonetics and phonology),  the term segment is "any discrete unit that can be identified,  either physically or   auditorily,    in the stream of speech.
Classifying speech units
Segments are called "discrete" because they are separate and individual, such as consonants and vowels, and occur in a distinct temporal order. Other units, such as tone, stress, and sometimes secondary articulations such as nasalization, may coexist with multiple segments and cannot be discretely ordered with them. These elements are termed suprasegmental.
Kinds of segment
The segments of sign language are visual, such as hands, movements, face, and body. They occur in a distinct spatial and temporal order. The SignWriting script represents the spatial order of the segments with a spatial cluster of graphemes. Other notations for sign language use a temporal order that implies a spatial order.  In phonetics, the smallest perceptible segment is a phone.  In phonology, there is a subfield of segmental phonology that deals with the analysis of speech into phonemes (or segmental phonemes), which correspond fairly well to phonetic segments of the analysed speech.
Marginal segments
When analyzing the inventory of segmental units in any given language, some segments will be found to be marginal, in the sense that they are only found in onomatopoeic words, interjections, loan words, or a very limited number of ordinary words, but not throughout the language. Marginal segments, especially in loan words, are often the source of new segments in the general inventory of a language. This appears to have been the case with English /ʒ/, which originally only occurred in French loans.


Suprasegmentals
Some phonemes cannot be easily analyzed as distinct segments, but rather belong to a syllable or even word. Such "suprasegmentals" include tone, stress, and prosody. In some languages, nasality or vowel harmony is suprasegmental.

II. Discussion  about comparing phonemes

Serbian orthography

Rephrasing to avoid saying that the Serbo-Croatian orthography is perfectly phonemic; it's not, as it fails to represent stress, pitch, and length on vowels.

/buts/

A sound that is a single phoneme in one language may be a , /buts/ means leg-covering footwear in English and consists of four phonemes /b u t s/; but in Hebrew it means a kind of cloth and consists of only three phonemes /b u ts/.     In fact, /ts/ in English is two phonemes /t/ and /s/, while IIUC Hebrew /t_s/ ("t-s ligature") is one phoneme. It's not the same "thing" interpreted as a phoneme cluster in English and as a single phoneme in Hebrew. The Hebrew sound is an affricate, like English "ch".

Czech r-hacek

Possibly the rarest sound is the one represented by "r hacek" (found in the name Dvorak) in the Czech language;  it appears to be unique to the language.  This sound (ř) is similar or equal to the one of French 'j'. It is also close (and related) to Polish 'rz'. -- AdSR    /ř/ is not equivalent to French /j/; French /j/ is the same as the English /s/ in measure,   Czech has the letter ž for that. /ř/ is similar, but it's rolled.   the Polish rz is closer to the Czech ž than to ř.
 It seemed to me to be /r/ and /ʒ/ articulated simultaneously.
Some Spanish speakers have the r-hacek sound for , although it is nonstandard and not terribly common.
Czech is certainly not the only language to have a phoneme unique to it. Dozens if not hundreds of languages share this property. Czech r-hacek just happens to be the example that is most well-known to Western linguists.

Allophony

The sounds /z/ and /s/ are distinct phonemes in English, but allophones in Spanish. Out of curiosity, what sound environment makes a Spanish speaker say [z]?  It seems like every use of the letter "z" should be pronounced as [s]. Not that spelling and phones/phonemes need to be very intimately related, of course; the main point is Spanish word with a [z] sound.  Maybe it's a feature of some particular pockets of Spanish? -- Ryguasu
What relation does have with /z/ in Spanish? None. is always the phoneme /θ/, with the voiced allophone [ð] before certain voiced consonants. Similarly, is always the phoneme /s/, with the voiced allophone [z] before certain voiced consonants, e.g. /'desde/ ['dezde].
You'll occasionally hear Spanish speakers using the /z/ sound for an S that appears before a voiced consonant in a phrase like ¿Quién es David?,  but certainly never in a word by itself, so it probably isn't a great example of an allophone.
Depends on dialect. There are many allophones of /s/. Most Spanish dialects have two: One at the beginning of syllables, one at the end of syllables. There may be different pronunciations at the ends of words than at the ends of syllables. The syllable-final allophones may be /h/ or /z/ before voiced (as in /desde/, /mismo/, or a lengthening of the previous vowel. Some dialects don't have syllable-final /s/ at all. The majority of the Spanish speakers don't have a distinct /T/ phoneme, but only /s/. If such a dialect voices syllable-final /s/, then may be [z], e.g. in /fe'ros/ [fe'roz].
            German is a better example of [s] and [z] being allophones of /s/. German has both phonemes.   By the way, in some cases z and s are allophones in English (for the plural -- or maybe it is /ez/) Slrubenstein   Right. For example, chairs ends in [z], while cats ends in [s]. -- Ryguasu
Allophones or allomorphs?   Yes, those are allomorphs. A better example of allophones in English would be the aspirated T at the beginning of "tip" and the non-aspirated T at the end of "pit", which English treats as the same sound in all contexts.  
Isn't it more than a bit confusing to say phonemes aren't sounds, and then in a section like this refer to them as sounds?   Yet /s/ and /z/ were allophones in Old English (at least in the Early West Saxon dialect). The /z/ allophone only being used when /s/ appeared in medial position.

How many points of articulation used?

Surely Dyirbal doesn't have the most places of articulation?  Ubykh, for instance, contrasts voiceless fricatives in labiodental, alveolar, postalveolar, alveolopalatal,  retroflex,  velar, uvular and glottal classes: fa to eat, sa sword, ʂa head, ʃa arrow, ɕa three, xa testis, χa to knit, haj no, and there is an additional bilabial class not represented in the fricatives.

English has 40 phonemes

English has 24 consonants including affricates and excluding foreign sounds such as /x/. It has 12 simple vowels and 8 diphthongs. Of course, not everyone speaks like this. Where I'm from, /h/ is deleted, /θ/ becomes [f] and /ð/ becomes [v].   But "English" without adjectives means "standard English".    It seems like a good indicator that this concept of the phoneme is getting at something that is at the sub-lexical and even sub-syllabic level of language,  but for various reasons the concept is flawed--therefore,  there will never be any agreements as to the exact phoneme inventories of a given language are.  If one key issue in language is to account for invariance across all that variation,  the phoneme comes up well short.
The entire thing needs re-written. The term refers to a set of concepts of historic interest to linguistics and phonology but is now largely obsolete.  That is because research has failed to find support for most conceptions of the phoneme in articulation, in acoustics and in speech perception.  It now seems more likely to be an artifact of writing systems.  To word it differently, if you try to set down dynamic speech in static units at a sub-syllabic level, you get things like phonemes and features.  That is the sort of analysis you have to rely on to write a language.  But there might be very little or nothing of this in the actual human psychology of language.  Interestingly enough, the one hope for retaining some sort of psychological or metalinguistic concept of the phoneme comes from reading acquisition of an alphabetic language--that is the current talk of 'phonemic awareness' in beginning literacy (which goes way way back to a Soviet research Elkonen).

III. References
·      A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, David Crystal, 2003, pp. 408–409
·      David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, Blackwell, 2003.
·      Carlos Gussenhoven & Haike Jacobs, "Understanding Phonology", Hodder & Arnold, 1998. 2nd edition 2005