Self Assessment

I found this very interesting and well explained. It looks to be a useful, engaging and productive form of self assessment, wish I had this at my school!

The TESOL massive - Diversity Rhyme

Celebrating diversity

Celebrating diversity

Getting creative with Voicethread

http://voicethread.com/share/1591997/

 A quick play with Voicethread here. Upload photos or pictures; record webcam or audio content. Create a story; interpret a poem; respond to pictures ....

Just experimenting with the embed code ...




I like this example from a younger learner setting http://voicethread.com/#q.b119840.i725907

An L1 example but note how a class can post within one Voicethread; you can navigate to display all or choose a particular one; comments appear left and right of the display screen.

See also this rationale for Voicethread as a rehearsal area for speaking practice http://voicethread.com/community/library/Language_learners_use_VoiceThread_to_practice_speaking/

Voicethread in a minute http://voicethread.com/?#u1529811.b8381.i61448

Ten youtube tips

Another useful teaching resource here with ten tips for using youtube in the classroom.

More on authentic materials

Richard's find of Sherman's chapter is a good job and a reminder that I forgot to mention Jane Sherman's book this morning!

If anyone is motivated to explore the 'authenticity' link further, there is also Mishan, F. (2003) Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials, Bristol: Intellect

If you can bear online reading of a whole book, this one is available via the library's ebook service. Select NetLibrary and search for the title.

Film, the broadcast media (TV),ICT, song, music all figure under a specific section entitled Using Cultural Products for Language Learning' . An extract from the broadcast media chapter:-)

Principles for the use of the broadcast media for language learning
• Counter passivity by listening/viewing with a purpose, requiring interactivity or
creating an information gap.
• Exploit original programme editing to determine excerpt length.
• Exploit the universality of broadcast genres: build on learners’ knowledge of
them for the study of both language and culture.
• View/listen in ways that are authentic to the medium and its genres: e.g. for gist,
for specific information.
• (With television) exploit the visual component of television e.g. non-verbal
communication, action and wordless sequences, the printed word on screen.
• Exploit all the multimedia features of television - audio, visual and Web site.

Further reading cited in the chapters though unfortunately not very wide ranging or recent. But if you are newer to video use and are looking for ideas, Stempleski and B. Tomalin 1990. Video in Action. Hemel Hemstead: Prentice Hall Group International is still a useful text if you can get hold of it.

Using Authentic Video Materials

Amazingly, it's possible to view the entire introduction to Jane Sherman's book on using authentic video if you go to the Amazon site and take the 'look inside' option. Just follow the link above.

I thought this might be of use for anyone interested in more information about using video.

I'm going to read it now!

The British Film Institute

The British Film Institute has a growing archive of old film clips. I recalled a download area of old back and white clips but can't find that now. But the ScreenOnline has access to some interesting footage. I wonder however if this is restricted to UK coverage?

But I also see that they have their own Youtube channel. Some creative thinking about use may be required but some interesting reminders of film history here.

Try 'Daisy Doodad's Dial' http://www.youtube.com/bfifilms#p/c/8E57BB312091E0F6/1/mneu7A3MVms for a possible 'script writing' activity:-)

Found this aswell if anyone is interested in comedy and silent movies http://www.btplc.com/BFI/broadband/Interface.html

Interesting that subtitles have been added and they seem to be 1-1 match with audio. As I watched I wondered if there was potential for vocabulary work out of that - I spotted some items that I am sure would get learners thinking and these could be noted; worked out in context because you can pause the clip. Though long overall, material nicely chunked. I see potential for some ESP settings

Thinking about video

Explore Vidinotes to create an accompanying digital worksheet

http://www.vidinotes.com/

Cool Web 2.0 tools for teachers

Found this prezi self guided presentation with video clips or pictures of cool sites to create cartoon clips, short films, talking pictures, etc. I'm going to try some out now!

Cool Fun Web 2.0 Stuff on Prezi

The Hole in the Wall project

This is well worth looking at - the triadic relationship between computers and learners , children with curiosity, and scaffolding at work:-) Bear with the sound quality and a little slowness in the development over the first 8 minutes or so.

Creative writing - 5 card Flickr

Anyone come across this before? 5 photos chosen from a set generated at random from Flickr. Create a short storty based on the choices.

Jing - Screen capture tool

This may be of interest to some of you?  A screen capture tool that allows you to capture pictures or create video clips of activity on your own computer screen. I use Adobe Captivate - you may recall seeing some clips in the online DAC materials but this is another free tool.

Virtlantis

Just one more pointer to thinking about what different synchronous tools might offer language learners.  I receive regular updates on language lessons and discussions from the Second Life Virtlantis group and now some of you have dabbled a little, you might like to take a look here.

Note the regular timetable of live chat events which learners might attend. You can go straight into the Virtlantis Island from this page. If you have a wander round, it would be interesting to see what you feel this might offer, perhaps as compared to text based synchronous encounters.

Are you a resident or a visitor?

This is a great video exploring a new description of internet users. On the one hand, there are 'residents', those who have an online presence and leave a footprint on the web, whether personal or professional. On the other, there are those who use the web solely as a toolbox, accessing content and using it to fit the tasks they need to complete.

I think it's a good description of internet use and much better than Prensky's 'Digital Native v Digital Immigrant' dichotomy. It's about 20 mins long and well worth watching.

An anthropological introduction to Youtube

I can recommend this as a thought provoking introduction to the Youtube phenomenon.
Further grist to the debate about drivers and emerging digital literacy. Would be interested to hear reactions and whether this relates to your own positions on the role of technology in language curricula.



.

Jigging in SL

Marco and Juli dancing along in SL:-) This was thanks to a 'Jigging bracelet' I gave to them for their inventories. When worn, this is the effect!

second life learning task

During our visit to Second Life on Monday we visited a couple of more places after the British Council. There are so many now: a Christmas market, winter wonderland (those who were there will tell you about the place I took them to by mistake:-); Barcelona; Eiffel Tower... the list goes on.
I described a possible task involving learners visiting different places, taking photos and returning to write about their travels. You might add specific outcomes at each of the places eg take a photo of the campfire in Sherwood Forest; collect a hat from the Christmas market (you can click on free hats and pick one up to wear); how many snowmen stand at the Ski run railway station? These questions could be targeted so that they eventually include such information in their writing. A cross between our scavenger hunt and webquest activities. Here are a few pics for the class album:-)

Spot Thuy sitting in the leaves?

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain | Video on TED.com

Here is another interesting video (15mins) looking at why so many people get engaged with video games and how this can be used to benefit other aspects such as education.

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain | Video on TED.com

Jesse Schell: When games invade real life | Video on TED.com

Jesse Schell: When games invade real life | Video on TED.com

I know we are all quite busy with homework, assignments, etc. but if you want to take a break for approximately half an hour, this is an interesting talk about the technology and games we have today and how they affect our life. Jesse Schell makes an interesting comment in that most of the things people are interested in nowadays is not as much fantasy games as real life ones or those most close to authentic lives.

Second Life interest group

Thanks to Richard for linking to Graham Stanley's blog and Youtube clip. Graham is actually a Manchester Edtech graduate and is now a recurring name in this area:-)

There is also a special interest group as part of the EuroCALL organisation at http://virtualworldssig.ning.com/
EuroCALL has headquarters in Second Life.
 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/EduNation%20III/74/199/31

If we get time, we'll visit next week but otherwise add to your landmarks for later. Those doing further units with us will get to know these places better next semester.

Eurcall is actually just being 'rebuilt' so not all original features are yet there; however,it is a very useful place. You can meet for a chat; see video clips, pick up useful sites; if you do get into SL, you can also pick up lots of freebie objects, landmarks, clothes:-) If you land there, you can get a EuroCALL t-shirt just at the entrance for example. Here's me at the entrance.

A week in a Second Life

I've just come across an interesting blog article by Graham Stanley about Second Life, I thought it might be of interest before the sessions next week. His character is called 'Baldric Commons' and this is a diary of one week in the (Second) Life of Baldric in the VLE.

The article is here.

This is also an interesting video, though it's not exactly objective.

aMap

Hi, I have just been into amap.org.uk and had a look around there. I was attracted to it as in my last position a large part of the course I taught covered debating. Amap is simple to use, it looks cool and the result is fun but I am unsure how it could represent both sides of an argument/debate. When you go into amap, you fill in the topic of your debate. I used the example of 'Should we have school uniforms'. You then fill in which position you are taking followed by your arguments which are separated into because... as... supported by... When you have put in your arguments/reasons it publishes your amap. Obviously it is only one side of the argument so I think this is great for helping students to get their arguments down and to structure them well so that they have strong arguments. However, I am unsure of what you are supposed to do with the final product. I saw there was an option to invite friends to your argument and was wondering if the friends could then add their side of the argument to the amap, this would be great if that could happen, almost like a virtual debate but I'm not sure if it does...sorry!!

Here is the amap I made...

MyStoryMaker

I have looked at MyStoryMaker. This website is designed for teaching children to develop writing skills. It is easy to use, the instructions are clear and straightforward. Children can create their own stories using the characters from the website. Moreover, the tool provides much help with choosing appropriate vocabulary during the process an even gives feedback. This tool can be used as a home task to practice grammar and words from the lesson or as a group work activity in class.

3D pop-up books:'Zooburst'

Thank you for the wonderful websites.

I have just signed up for a ‘Zooburst’ which shows a wide range of 3D pop-up books as well as creative personal books. ‘Zooburst’ is a website where one of the functions is called ‘My Books’ which allows users to manage their own personal library of 3D pop-up books. I am sure that it will be amazing to help my younger learners create their own story books using a program new to them. Since they can make up their own characters and stories for their books, not only can they improve their own creative writing skills (sequencing / coherence etc.), but they can also build portfolios of work to be assessed continuously, helping me to scaffold subsequent learning. In addition to this, it is free of charge, so anyone can easily sign up for it. Having said this, I expected it to have more audible functions to make users more attracted to it, a concern of mine given the usual need to motivate younger learners more. However, I might be nicely surprised soon and stumble across some hidden sounds. At least, I hope so!

Storybird

Storybird provides a selection of great images to choose from and is very easy to use.

Sign in, choose an artist by taking a look at the styles available and write!

I had a go at making a short poem and found it great fun. It is a great finale for children's story or poetry writing and can be published online too.

I can see myself using this with my class back in Spain. Loved it!

Which path, little princess?

Cool Tools for Schools - Comics

I had a look at a couple of the 'cartoon' sites - Toondoo and Pikistrips. They seem entertaining and quite useful. You can create your own cartoon strips using images from the internet or your own photos, add speech bubbles, and share them with other people.

At first glance, it might seem that these sites would be more useful for young children and teenagers, but they would probably appeal to adults, especially if you're looking for a bit of 'light relief' in a lesson. The cartoon strips lend themselves to writing short dialogues, so would be good for practising short transactional conversations, such as exchanges in a shop, bank or post office.

Creative writing

Various of the tools we've been exploring take writing 'output'into more creative realms. What do we think about encouraging the creation of multimedia texts in our language classrooms? Is this a digital literacy that learners need to develop or is it simply another ploy to use technology to motivate? What about our concerns specifically as language teachers? What is the language learning link? We're going to very briefly look at Moviemaker as a tool to support text generation of a multimedia kind. To do this, I've loaded here some photos to save to your My Documents. You can use these to create a 'story' in MMaker. We'll then look at the 'language concerns' at each stage.

'Novlet' collaborative non-linear storywriting

I just had a go on one of the Web 2.0 tools called 'Novlet' which I think would appeal both young and adult learners. This website allows you to write your own story of any genre by writing a passage consisting of 2~3 paragraphs and anyone who is keen on keeping it going can simply add a bit of story to it. Also, you can just browse numerous stories written by other users.
I think this website can encourage a learner to try writing stories of different genres and moreover generate ideas to write about inspired by previous writers. In addition, the fact that anyone out there can be a potential audience will remind the learner to think about the accuracy of the writing.
I am not sure if this tool can be implemented directly in the classroom as it seems not possible to alow only a certain group of people to have an access to editing the story as co-authors. If not, it will be hard to have a complete piece of work done by learners only.

Variation on Wordle: Wordsift

This also produces wordclouds but then check out the other associated visual tools. Just click on one of the sample texts and then SIFT. Note the visual thesaurus allows you to click on a word within the cloud and there is an immediate search on Google images too. Chunks of text where the KWIC occurs are displayed too.
What I realise though is this clearly explores single word units ie the notion of the lexical chunk is not accounted for. Very interesting, though, is they provide a note of the theory behind the tool!  http://www.wordsift.com/site/theory

Tools for reflection: blogs, penzu

Susan posted on Penzu and I have already added a comment to her post:-) However this made me also realise that I was suggesting a more global theme that I felt needed tagging - we can't tag comments. (Susan, there is an example here of tagging - if you wanted to tag your own post, you can edit as the author and do that).

This reflection on tagging also exemplifies how we need to think about the specific affordances of these tools. As we know, things can get difficult to find again and tagging helps us to locate.

Anyway, thanks to Susan for trying out Penzu - I hadn't had a look before. As Irene noted, there is a share function and this caused me to think more about the private/public dimensions of tools such as Penzu or the blog we're now reading. Social networking seems to encourage much more of the public, in fact.

However, Penzu starts in the personal domain and I think as a personal learning diary, could be a simple but effective tool; learners could choose to share the content they wish or use it for metacognitive reflection, prompted by the teacher, about learning. But the teacher may never see the original content.

Other diaries may be shared dfor specific reasons. That also reminded me that when you guys come to doing your Developing Researcher Competence course, you'll be encouraged to keep a researcher diary. I have a student who logged her whole dissertation journey in a blog which I as supervisor could see Clare's research diary (link here as I know Clare has given me permission to show you:-) but Penzu could also serve quite well as a more private researcher diary.

So these thoughts are really musing about diaries, blogs (any other tools) for personal v collaborative use. We tend to spend quite a bit of time exploring the 'social' 'collaborative' but mustn't neglect private reflection:-) By the way I tried the share function in Penzu - you can select a code to embed into a blog or wiki for example. This is the embedded public code Diane's diary

Paper Rater

As we are all about to submit our first paper that will be marked and we are thinking of what we will do for our other courses I thought I'd investigate this useful tool. I copied and pasted my DAC paper into it and waited for the few seconds it took to get a rating. It was with some trepidation that I clicked on the plagiarism indicator and found that it was 100% original. Well I wouldn't go that far, but at least I hadn't unwittingly picked up a chunk of text that wasn't attributed. It came up with a few grammar and spelling alternatives and one suggestion for a phrase that it thought I should change. I don't know what Diane thinks of this tool - but I think this could be really useful for students preparing for university entrance even if we don't want to use this for school age students. I'd be interested to see what some of my classmates think of this. Sorry it's not a pretty tool like many of the others I've seen.

Penzu

Ok, this is the first time I have ever blogged and it's quite scary!

I have just been in and tried this site which allows you to keep a PRIVATE online journal. I have a student at present who wants to practise her writing and I have suggested she keeps a diary. I said she could do it in a notebook or on the class Wiki if she liked, but she didn't want the rest of the class reading it. I have just sent her this link so she has an online option and if she wants to share it with me or decides to open it up to more people in the future then she can.

It seems a great idea for all of us who don't like the idea of our every thought being available for the world to read but are happier typing away than writing by hand.

Not very collaborative or even cooperative, but might really motivate some students to get writing.

my first attempt at limericks and artisancam_picturebookmarker

http://www.artisancam.org.uk/flashapps/picturebookmaker/captures/stf/index.php?incomingNum=3102

Zooburst

To start us off, I had a look at Zooburst.

It allows you to create an online 'popup book' using text and pictures. Very easy to use; you can use pictures from the cliparts provided or upload your own. I was thinking maybe you could give learners a set of pictures to work from and create their own story ie an interpretive story or give them scope to search for their own but you can waste a lot of time there. You can really manipulate the pictures much on screen so not much scope for very sophisticated graphics:-)

The text for each page of the book probably needs to be quite short but at higher levels the challenges could be to write a pithy story in 6 lines for example.

The books can be embedded as I've done here in a post, in a blog or your wiki.

Here is my rather uninspired (visually) attempt to produce a popup story of the carpetfitter and the canary:-)

Web 2.0 MOODLE

MOODLE (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a FREE open-source e-learning software. It allows you to create an online course for students focussing on interaction, collaboration and construction. Supposedly very popular in the teaching world. I have not had a try at creating anything yet, just been exploring and investigating looking at the possibilities of using it with my class.

A great site for writing with YLs

Me again,

Just came across this via twitter (it's great, join in!). It's a fantastic site.

Have a watch of Russell Stannard's (web legend) intro video here.

This is Russell site, it's well worth a visit: Teacher Training Videos

A Class Blog

Here's a really simple blog that a teacher in France is using with her students. She has various different sections and is using it to communicate with her students to provide reminders, class summaries and links for extra practise.


Have a look!


http://dpaci.blogspot.com/

Richard

Young learners producing vokis

This is a blog for young learners of French as a foreign language. Here they produce their own vokis. The 'voices' are not their own but those of the 'synthesised' selections you can choose from. So rather than the learners recording orally, then type in the text for it to be 'read' by the synthesised voice.

Young learner vokis

In French but transferable to Engish as a FL. The blog is clearly a space to which learners post their vokis for others to share and this seems to be a common use of blogs - more than a collaborative space as such perhaps? Maybe worth thinking about their affordances with these particular aims in mind - teacher blog, class blog, individual blog; task management, sharing, collaboration...

Social networking

A Teachers' TV clip demonstrating ideas for social networking in the teaching of foreign languages:
Twitter in Spanish;
e-Twinning project;
Vokis;
wikis;
Voicethread

Social networking in language teaching

As you watch:
find out about technologies you are unfamiliar with;
how does the teacher respond to questions about privacy and security.

Technology in school contexts: teacher site

An example of video clips from Learning and Teaching Scotland. Although UK based, there is a wealth of resource here that you can browse. This is one from the podcasting series Voice thread and vokis

Each clip brings with it associated tagged clips as this one does.

There are various interesting clips showing IT use with younger learners. This one about e-twinning between primary children in a Scottish primary and a Polish school. E-twinning

Interesting comments by teacher about the project which she describes as happening 'outwith' the classroom, although very 'controlled' within - relates to the points I have made about careful planning and sequencing of activity that moves beyond the classroom walls.

Embedding Wordles

When you publish a Wordle you can copy an embed code to add it to your posting. Could be useful when creating a teacher blog or indeed to get learners to share their clouds.