Learning Kids Games

This is an interesting new approach to instant chat rooms that I haven't seen before. BabelWith.Me actually translates the chat text for you as you chat with people who use other languages.

It's really easy to set up, you just go to the BabelWith.Me home page and click on 'Start a Conversation'. This creates a chat room for you and you then just choose your user name. You can then select the language you want to use and send the unique link to the room to the people who you want to chat with.

Here's the link to the room I created, but I'm not sure how long this will stay live: http://www.babelwith.me/CxEr

I'm not sure how well the translation works, but there are quite a few languages to choose from, so why not give it a try. You can also send invitations out through the interface using Twitter, Facebook or email, which could be handy.

This could be a nice tool to use if you are running a cultural exchange with students from another country.
You could get half your class communicating in English and half using their L1 and see how well they understand each other (It could illustrate for them the limitations of translation).
It could just be a nice way to get students chatting with other classes or interviewing people from outside your class (with or without the translation feature).

I hope you find it useful. Here you can find chat activities for students.

Related links:

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Nik Peachey Read More..

I'm not sure how many people still use text based threaded discussion forums, but if you do Forumotion is a pretty powerful tool with some nice features that you can use to set one up for free. It's very quick and you don't need any technical skills or hosting.

Basically you just go to http://www.forumotion.com/, and click on 'Create a free forum'.

You'll then be able to select from a range of different template designs.

Once you've chosen the one you want you fill in the details of your forum and create a password.

You'll then be ready to activate you forum and start using it. The best place to start in on the Administration Panel. Here you can get some tips on how to get started and how to get your forum registered with search engines etc.

If you want to see what a forum can look like and try it out, there's one her which I created as an example. http://nikpeachey.forumotion.net/index.htm

Forumotion has some nice features and is pretty simple. There is also a news letter function so that you can send messages to all the members of your forum.

This is a handy tool if you are teaching distance classes, or would just like to set up some simple online discussion topics for your students. It also looks like the are taking their responsibilities seriously regarding e-safety too, though you should still read the terms of use, as there is some sharing with third parties of non personal information.

Hope you find this useful.

Related links for teachers:

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Fonomo is one of the simplest and easiest free video conferencing solutions I have seen. If you're looking for no frills, no downloads and no charges, then this could be a good place to start. Just go to the Fonomo site. Decide if you want private or public conferencing.

Choose an option for sending invitations to the person you want to conference with.

Generate the code and then send it to them.

Then go to your page and make sure you allow access to your video and audio.

And there you have it. You are video conferencing.
It looks like the private option is one to one and the you need the public option for more than two people. I'm not sure what the maximum is and how well it would take the load of having groups, but for just two people it looks simple and easy and best of all no downloads or charges.

Hope you find it useful.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

I've just been enjoying a recording of a live Adobe Breeze presentation given by Sean Banville from Breaking News English. Sean was presenting and being interviewed by Jurgen Wagner of Fremdsprachen und Neue Medien

This is really well worth a watch, both in terms of the content, Sean is veteran EFL ESL podcaster with a real passion for his work, but also in terms of how the online presentation works with a live online group audience.

I found this really enlightening, partly because it was the first time Jurgen had attempted this and you can see how they are thinking on their feet to solve problems, but also because I'll be doing a similar thing myself in Second Life soon.

Nice one Jurgen. Look forward to seeing more of these.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

I've just been playing with a new tool called Bubble Comment that enables you to create video comments about websites.

Here's an example I created.

The tool is free and easy and quick to use. There's no registration required, and when you're finished you simply get a link url like the one above that you send to people to show them your comment.

You get about 90seconds to give your comment and you need a microphone and a webcam of course. You just open up the web page you want to comment on and select the appropriate microphone and camera driver.

This would be a nice tool for students to use to talk about and share their favourite websites. Or it could be a good way for you to share websites with your students, rather than having and text annotated list of resources.

Really handy stuff. I might start using it with each of my posting here.

Hope you enjoy it.

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Nik Peachey

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SnapYap.com looks like a nice free tool for sending video messages. It doesn't involve downloading any software as it uses the Adobe Flash plugin. You just have to allow access to your webcam and microphone.

You can either exchange messages with other registered users, email links to your messages to people or send them a link to your messages page.

This video from Snapyap.com explains it all.

I haven't tried this yet, but I think it could be quite an interesting communication tool and a nice way of developing materials for students and it's free!

Let me know if you have any luck using it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

I checked out Twitter some time ago and couldn't really see what all the fuss was about. Embarrassingly, after signing up for an account people started following my Twitter even though I wasn't posting! I've also been hearing so many people raving about Twitter that I thought maybe I should give it another chance.

At the same time I've started getting interested in Plurk.com which on first impression I actually prefer, as It seems to have more scope for delivering rich media (embedding video etc into postings) and also because I like the visual time line aspect of the design.

Anyway, I've decided to experiment by using both for the next few weeks and see what happens.

If you'd like to sign up and join the experiment, by all means sign on using the links below.

You can become my friend on Plurk by clicking here>>
Or
Just go see my Plurk time line got to: http://www.plurk.com/user/nikpeachey

And / Or

Follow me on Twitter by going to www.twitter.com and search for Nik Peachey
Or
Do something far more productive with your time!

If you do follow one or both of these I'd love your feedback here in the comments section.

Hope this doesn't turn into the most boring experiment ever.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Learning Kids Games

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Multilingual Instant Chat Rooms

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Create a Quick Discussion Forum

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Very Easy Video Conferencing

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Bring the News into the Classroom: Online Presentation

Monday, July 21, 2008

Great Video Commenting Tool

Friday, July 4, 2008

Send Free Video Messages

Friday, June 6, 2008

Twitter vs Plurk