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.