AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom

For a while now I've been using Posterous in class and in training sessions to help show teachers and students just how easy it can be to create a blog.
(Basically, all they have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com with the title of the posting in the subject line and the text they want in the email along with and media as attachments and within minutes they'll get a link back to their published posting.)

No, though with the combination of Posterous and AudioBoo, the process of publishing audio directly to the web within minutes has just got easier too.
AudioBoo is a great free platform for publishing audio online. You can either go to their website and start recording straight away, or you can download a free app either to your Apple device or Android smart phone.
The site really does enable almost single click publishing once you have registered and set up your profile, but better than this it can be synced with a Twitter account, Facebook profile or blogging account so that any materials you record go directly to your network.

Publish directly from the classroom
I've found this really useful, particularly as I have the app installed on my iPad. This means that I can wander round class recording my students and then click a button and have their recordings published directly to my blog with seconds.
Then I can go to the blog later and build review tasks around the materials or students can go to the blog pages and comment on each others' recordings.

• Here you can see and hear what the result is when you publish direct to Posterous: My first AudioBoo to Posterous recording from iPad

With students
Having this ability to instantly record and publish students' speaking can be very powerful, particularly when using a task based approach, as students are often reluctant to review and repeat speaking tasks that they have already done once. However, knowing that their speaking will be recorded and published gives them the extra motivation to repeat tasks, focus on what they have learned and concentrate on achieving a level of accuracy.

Setting all this up is very simple. Once you have your Posterous blog account, register on the AudioBoo website, create your profile then go to settings and click on 'Post to other sites'. There you can decide which services you want to synchronise your AudioBoo account with. Then you just start recording and publishing.

AudioBoo and Posterous together can help you to build a powerful and versatile publishing platform for your students work and they are both free, so why not give them a try.

I hope you find them useful. Here you can find speaking activities to use EFL / ESL with students.

Related links:

• Skype Part 1 Recording Audio
• My Talking Faces
• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Soundscapes from Soundtransit

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Nik Peachey Read More..

When Twitter isn't Enough

I know that everybody loves Twitter at the moment and microblogging and other 'micro genre' are generally growing in popularity, but there are times when 140 characters or 12 Seconds aren't enough, and that can be pretty frustrating, so Write4net looks like a pretty handy tool for anyone who doesn't want to compromise on what they have to say, but still wants to deliver the message to their Twitter following.

It looks quite simple to use and you don't need to register, though you do need to put in your Twitter information (or be logged in to your Twitter account) so that it can post to your Twitter feed.

You just add a title, write your text and add some hash tags if you feel the need. Then start writing your text. You can format the text, add images, have external links and embedded video etc too if you want to go that far.


Then when you are ready, just click to publish it and broadcast it to your following.

Write4net creates a page for your posting and then your Twitter followers can click through to it. The page gives you some interesting stats too about how many people click through to the page and view your posting. Always handy to know this kind of thing.

• Here is the actual page if you would like to check it out. Shidonni Introduction

Write4net sells itself as being an alternative to a blog, and in the end it looks a lot like a blog, but it is really quick and simple and allows you to get a good degree of media rich information out to your Twitter following, though do be sure to add a good instructive title so that people know whether they want to click through or not. This is how my test posting appeared.

If you are hooked on Twitter and use it a lot with students or get your students to use it a lot, this could be a really useful way of giving a bit more depth and scope to your interactions. It is really quick and easy.

You could start using it to deliver media rich assignments with images and video, without having to go to very much trouble. Your students could also leave comments on the text (the comments will also be tweeted) , so there are some nice simple features here.

On the whole I think this is a pretty useful tool, but I don't think it will be replacing my blogs quite yet. I hope you enjoy it.

Related links:

• Note Taking Tool for Digital Literacy
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Ideas for Creative Writing
• Simple Tool for Collaborative Writing

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Writing Upside Down

Have you ever wanted to write upside down on a web site? Well now you can, just go to Upside Down Letters, type in your text and watch as it appears upside down in the field below.

Then just cut and past your text into your page. Here's what it looks like.

˙ǝʞıן sʞooן ʇı ʇɐɥʍ s,ǝɹǝɥ ˙ǝƃɐd ɹnoʎ oʇuı ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ ʇsɐd puɐ ʇnɔ ʇsnɾ uǝɥʇ
˙ʍoןǝq pןǝıɟ ǝɥʇ uı uʍop ǝpıspdn sɹɐǝddɐ ʇı sɐ ɥɔʇɐʍ puɐ ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ uı ǝdʎʇ 'sɹǝʇʇǝן uʍop ǝpısdn oʇ oƃ ʇsnɾ 'uɐɔ noʎ ʍou ןןǝʍ ¿ǝʇıs qǝʍ ɐ uo uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ pǝʇuɐʍ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ ǝʌɐɥ

As you can see, it's not perfect and there are no upper case letters, but it does the job.

So why have upside down text? Well could be handy as a reading challenge or also to add answers to online tasks and stop students from going straight to them.

Hope you find Upside Down Letters useful.

Related links:

• Cloze Test Creation Tool
• Listening Dictation Puzzles for EFL ESL
• Creating an interactive cloze text
• MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’
• Create EFL / ESL Lesson Plans in Mins
• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
• Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL
• Prompting reading speeds

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Language Learning Blog Carnival Spring 2009

Well, finally, I have managed to work my way through the many excellent entries for the Spring 2009 Language Learning Blog Carnival. I have to say that it hasn't been easy, but it has been a very interesting process and one that has helped me to better define my own beliefs and opinions about what a 'good ' blog posting should be.

Of course these beliefs and opinions are personal to me so you may not agree or share them, but they are what I have used to guide me in the choices I've made.

So these are the criteria that I have formulated as my personal guide to what I look for when I'm reading a blog posting.

• Informative - Above all I want to learn something new when I go to a blog, so I'm looking for useful informative original content.
• Complete - I look for postings that are 'complete' in that you can read them and learn something from them without having to go off to lots of other place.
• Non commercial - Like most people in education, I don't have much time or money to throw around and would prefer to read about free resources rather than 'advertorials'.
• Appropriate to the medium - A blog is very specific medium. The best bloggers I think are people who understand the medium and can get the tone and length right and structure their message within those confines.
• Transferable - When I read a blog I'm not content just to absorb the message, I want to be able to take it and transfer it to what I do.

Anyway, enough of criteria. Here are my favourites from the blog postings that were submitted.

My Favourites

• I really enjoyed Model United Nations: a Teacher’s Guide from Dave's Big in Japan Blog. The posting is a guide to creating Model United Nations course. It's a really useful posting that delivers exactly what it says on the box in a clear concise and well structured way. There's enough information there to actually take away and try it yourself and he's even included some downloadable worksheets to help you do that. Despite being based in Japan, what he has written here can be transferred to any teaching context in any country. Fantastic! Dave also submitted an article on Preparing students for speech and debate contests that is well worth a read.
• This posting on the Literacy Cycle from Dorothy Burt of the Manaiakalani blog is another great example of a concisely written and well structured posting. Dorothy has managed to cram a great deal of information and observations gained over the process of two years into one very readable posting. A good read for anyone interested in e-learning of English.
• I also really liked this posting from Özge Karaoğlu's blog on Digital Story Telling and got quite involved in the discussion on it. Again, this is a well written concise posting with lots of information to take away and use as well as some good examples. This is an area that fascinates me too and one that students really enjoy. The information given in the blog is also transferable to pretty much any country or Internet connected teaching context.
• Next on my list of favourites is Larry Ferlazzo's The Best Sites For K-12 Intermediate English Language Learners. It always amazes me how Larry can not only find all these sites, but that he is able to 'quality control' them too. The list is concise gives clear descriptions and all the sites he recommends are there because they are great. So many links collections focus on quantity and then still leave you sifting through the rubbish to find what you want. I went through all the links in this page and could use all of them. Great stuff.
• Another posting that I really enjoyed and ended up getting involved in was from Carl Dowse and was on Using Second Life to teach Business English. Again this is a well written post and it makes good use of other media such as video and images. Carl's obviously put a lot of time and thought into the posting and best of all has moved beyond the medium as 'broadcast' and has opened up debate on the topic. Nice one.
• I like this post 'I dislike the word homework' for a similar reason. The writer, Karenne Joy Sylvester, has been able to move beyond broadcasting her ideas and has been able to prompt others to write in and share their experiences and ideas on a very simple yet common topic. Exploiting this collaborative potential is one of the real challenges and opportunities of blogs.
• When Will the Visual Revolution Get to our Classrooms? This is what Carla Arena asks in her posting on the power of digital images and video to convey meaning and engage our students. This posting is a well structured argument in support of greater integration of digital imagery into our classrooms.
• The last of my favourites is Six computer games to use in an English language classroom from Lindsay Clandfield's Six Things blog. This again is a concise well written posting with plenty of practical information. The use of computer games in education is a hot topic at the moment and this posting offers an easy way in for language teachers that want to check this out.

As well as these favourites there were also some other pretty impressive postings submitted.

• This is a posting that I actually disagree with, but it is none the less a good example of a well structured and argued blog posting. Standardized Testing is a necessary evil was written by Leigh Thelmadatter and posted on the Mexico Teacher's Alliance Ning site. Be sure to read it if you are interested in testing and assessment.
• I enjoyed Don’t Date The Boss. Have A Meeting With Her Instead again by Karenne Joy Sylvester. Much as I loved the poem and images as a way of correcting errors I was less clear about who it was directed at, teachers or students. It seemed to be addressing teachers at the beginning with advice for students at the end, so what wasn't so clear was how to transfer the information here to my own context.
• I also really enjoyed Susana Canelo's Del Valle Film Festival, though not so much because of the blog posting but because of the Wiki that it linked to and the students work included there. I was left wanting to know how Susan had set up the 'Picture our song' activity that led to these great videos.
• In a similar vein I enjoyed seeing this posting from Mr Stout's Blog for Students and Teachers, but was left wanting to see more and wondering how he had got his students to create these videos, so that I could perhaps try this project myself.

Well that's the end of my first blog carnival and I hope that the people who have submitted posts that weren't included here aren't too offended. What's above is my personal choice based against my own criteria and it's quite possible that others would make a different selection. For anyone who wants to have a look at the complete set of entries, you can see them in one of my boxes on Simply Box.

• Blog Carnival submissions

For anyone who wants to submit a post to the next blog carnival. It will be hosted on Alice Mercer's blog and you can submit a posting at: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/eprof_28891.html

Alice teaches English Language Learners in Sacramento, and will host the June 1st edition of the Blog Carnival.



Lastly, thanks again to Larry Ferlazzo for asking me to host this carnival and apologies for getting it up a few days late.

Related links:

• Naming My Sources: Part 2
  
• Creating a personal homepage
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Quick Shout
• Nik's Daily English Activities

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Blog Carnival

I'm very proud to say that I have been asked by Larry Ferlazzo to host the next EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival which I will be posting here on April 1st 2009, with submissions due in no later than the day before.


If you have a blog and have posted something over the last month which you think would be of interest to teachers of English (examples of student work are also welcome!) you can contribute posts from your blog using this easy submission form.

To see examples from the last Blog Carnival go to David Deubelbeiss' blog and check out some of the entries there at: EFL Classroom 2.0

Look forward to receiving your submissions. Don't be shy.

Related links:

• Naming My Sources: Part 2
  
• Creating a personal homepage
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Quick Shout
• Nik's Daily English Activities
  

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Teachers' Stories

I've just noticed a really nice new feature on the British Council | BBC TeachingEnglish website. It's called Teachers' Stories and has a small collection of video interviews with teachers talking about how they became interested in English language and language teaching.

You can find the Teachers' stories within the 'Transform' section and at the moment there are 4 videos, two from teachers in Ethiopia, one from India and another from Czech Republic.

Nice features of these videos are that you can leave comments for the teacher, there are a couple of reflection tasks for teachers to do and best of all teachers are also invited to start their own blog on the site and share their experiences and stories. There are even some tips on how to write a good blog posting from your truly!

Hope you enjoy these.

Related links:

• Rod Bolitho on TeachingEnglish
• ELT classroom videos
• Would you recommend this?
• English Online
• Conference presentation videos
• Resources for Continuing Professional Development

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Edublog Awards 2008 Nomination

Well wonder of wonders, my Learning Technology Blog has been nominated for an Edublog Award.
It's been nominated within the Best Resource Sharing category, which means there is some VERY stiff competition. To be honest, my money ( and actually my nomination) is on Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day/ but it's still nice that someone has seen fit to nominate one of my blogs.

If you haven't already, it's well worth checking out the list of blogs that have been nominated as there's some really excellent ones there, which makes it that much more of an honour to get one of mine in there. You can see all the categories here: Edublog Awards 2008

And you can see my nominations here: My nominations

Hope you find some interesting stuff there.

Related links:

• My learning technology blog
• My nominations
• Naming My Sources: Part 2
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Creating a personal homepage

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Edublog Awards 2008

I'm always really nervous about submitting blogs for awards, because I look at and learn from so many and it's so easy to over look something great and to offend someone who is left out. Anyway, I've done my best to suggest a few here that I think are really fantastic and which I've personally benefited from, so by some way of thanks here are my nominations for the Edublogs Awards for 2008.

Best individual blog
It was really hard to decide on this category as almost any blog could go here, but I think EFL | 2.0 deserves to be included here for both its really well written and well considered content and for the great visual design of the blog
http://maberui.webs.upv.es/


Best new blog
I really like Life is a Feast because of the great name and what in conveys about the writer's attitude towards education, but also because it is so clearly a documentation of real classroom use of technology with students. There's also some great humour and examples there.
http://www.lifefeast.blogspot.com/

Best resource sharing blog
Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL
This blog has to be here for the sheer volume of material covered alone. The postings are extremely regular, everything is well categorised and stored so as to be easily accessible and what is there is great quality. I can't think of any blog that comes close to competing in this category (Apologies to other blog writers)
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/larry-ferlazzos-english-website/


Best teacher blog
I think Box of Tricks is another great site that so clearly draws on real classroom experience of using technology with students. The content has real depth and insight as well as being informatively written. Also really well designed.
http://www.boxoftricks.net

Best educational tech support blog
Okay, so MakeUseOf isn't designed to be an 'educational' tech support blog, but I have to sat that when I need support finding out about the different tech resources available and how to use them it's the first place I go and usually the last, so ...
http://www.makeuseof.com/


Best educational use of video / visual
TEFL Clips is a site that I wrote about recently on Quick Shout. I've chosen this one because it has complete, well written lesson plans that use authentic materials from YouTube. Great resource and some very creative plans.
http://www.teflclips.com/

Best educational use of a virtual world
My choice for best use of a virtual world goes to The Consultants-E and their Edunation islands. There is such a great variety of activity there and loads of free space and especially for the free teach tools.
Edunation Island

Best class blog
I found it really hard to decide on this last one but finally chose Aiden's English Advertising Class. I particularly like Aiden's English Advertising blog because she gets her students to share the storyboards which give an insight into how they created the materials.
http://english-ad.blogspot.com/

Hope you enjoy these blogs and many thanks once again to the creators for their hard work and to the literally hundreds of other bloggers who work hard everyday promote a world where people can have a better education.

Related links:

• Creating a personal homepage
• Naming My Sources: Part 1
• Naming My Sources: Part 2
• Training Teachers to Use Blogger
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Quick Shout

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Training Teachers to Use Blogger

I've written about Russell Stannard's Teacher Training Videos site before, and as ever it continues to be a fantastic resource. I'm now glad to say that Russell has published a series of videos on how to use Blogger and set up your own blog.

Click to enlarge the image

The series of videos is divided into 16 clips in all and takes you from registering with the site all the way through to adding different page elements and importing video.

My favourite clip in the series though has to be number 2 where he talks about my Learning Technology blog!



The rest of the site is also well worth checking out too as there are a lot of other videos on useful topics.

If you have used blogs or wikis with students, I'd be interested to know which you find most effective., so please leave a comment.

Related postings:

• Using wikis for teacher development
• Using wikis with EFL students
• Creating a Wiki

Hope you enjoy the videos

Best

Nik Peachey

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The 12 Second Video Answer to Twitter

I've been having a quick look at a new alpha site which could become the video version of Twitter and Plurk. The site is called 12 Second TV and as the name would suggest allows users to creat a feed made up of 12 Second video clips. The site has only just gone to public alpha and I haven't had a chance to try it out as I'm still waiting for my invitation.



Looking at some of the clips that are there already, I don't really see anything much that i would subscribe to, though I think the idea is good and sound and this certainly has potential.

Looking forward to giving it a try.

Hope to have more to report soon. Update: Since writing this I have published a more in depth report witrh examples and teaching tips here on my learning technology blog.

Related postings

• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Send Free Video Messages
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Video conferencing for EFL

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Up and Coming blogs

I'm rather pleased that my Learning technology blog (number 41) has been recognised as one of the 50 up and coming must read blogs, by Teaching Tips.com.


Their top 50 have been sorted and catagorised with some brief description about why each one makes the grade and why you should read it.

• 50 must read up and coming blogs

There's some interesting stuff there and it's well worth a look. So have a search through and add the best feeds to your reader or personal homepage . If you don't have a feed reader or homepage, then have a look at my article on how to create one using Netvibes, as it does save you a lot of time.

Teaching tips.com have also put together a list of 100+ resources for teaching without course books and that's well worth checking out too.

Hope you find something useful there.

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