ePub Bud is a free tool for creating books for the iPad. It does this in a number of ways. Either you can send a book to the company and they say they will digitize it for free, you can upload an existing digital copy and it will be converted on the site, or you can use the WYSIWYG interface to write straight into the site.
I tried uploading my Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers manual from the PDF format and this is what it came out like. You can download it from here if you are lucky enough to have an iPad Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers iPad edition
The process of uploading it was pretty simple. Once you are registered you just click on 'Upload', locate the file in the usual way and click again to upload it. Once the file is uploaded, it takes a short while to convert it to the format for iPad.
When it has been converted the status will change from 'unprocessed' to 'Converted to ePub'. You can then share the link with anyone who wants to read your materials or book on their iPad. You can set privacy status on the file and add tabs and index it. You can even edit the file once it's uploaded using the on site WYSIWYG.
This is a great way to convert content for use on the iPad. It doesn't have to be books of course, you could also use it for worksheets, or notes for your students or books or stories they have created themselves.
It's also worth checking out the books that are already there too as there is quite a collection. The focus seems to be mainly on children's books at the moment. Have a look in the 'browse' section and see if anything takes your fancy.
If you have ever seen PrimaryPad or EtherPad, then Sync.in will probably look quite familiar. It's an online collaborative text editing tool, that allows multiple users to work on the same text synchronously.
It's very simple to use, you just click on the 'Create a New Public Note' button and it launches the text editor and gives your text a unique URL. You then just click on 'Share this Note' to send your URL to any of a number of different social networks or by email.
Once visitors click the link they can start editing the text. The edits of each visitor are colour coded and they can even communicate with each other while they edit by using the text chat window that opens by the side of the document.
It isn't clear exactly how many visitors can work on the same text (PrimaryPad supports groups of six) but having too many people working on the same text can often lead to chaos. Sync.in has very hand desktop launcher though, so you can create multiple pads and then get different groups of people using them, just by clicking on the 'New Note' button.
One of the other interesting features is that you can use the 'Time Slider' feature to 'replay' the development of the text. This shows you how and who has developed the text, added and edited parts. This is a great way to track how much work each of your students did on the text.
This is a really useful tool for a connected classroom or computer lab where you can get students developing texts and peer editing together. It's also great if you are running online courses and you want students to work together on a text. I've also written about how it can be used within presentations to make them more interactive here: 3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations
I've added a pad below so you can click the link and try adding ideas on how to use Sync.in and editing other people's ideas. I'm not sure how long this will stay live though.
Sunday 14th June 09 (GMT 18.00 = 11.00 PST) will see the next in our series of 'Coffee With ..' education chat shows on Edunation II in Second Life, so please do come along, join our audience and meet other people interested in developing education and learning within Second Life.
In this show I'll be interviewing, teacher, teacher trainer, and ELT author Pete Sharma. Pete is a Business English expert and has published books on blended learning. He also publishes weekly e-lessons for Macmillan and has his own office in Second Life.
This is a chance to come along and participate in discussion with an ELT and technology expert.
If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation II or email Gavin at: gavin.dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 7 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 11.00 PST and 20.00 CET)
If you don't have a Second Life avatar but would like to know how to set one up then you can download instructions from here. Setting up a Second Life avatar
I've just been having a quick look a JotForm and it looks like a very useful tool. JotForm is a simple online tool for creating online forms of various kinds.
There are a number of pre-configured ones that you can create and customize, just using the wizard, or you can create a blank one and add what ever features you want from the Toolbox, just by dragging them onto the page.
Once you have your features on the page, you just click on them and edit the properties. It really is very simple to do. You can use JotForm for a whole range of things and it has some very powerful features. As well as adding images, password fields and captcha from the 'Power Tools' section, you can also add payment features, to enable you to charge for services.
The blank form creation is great for creating your own e-learning materials. You add images, text and by dragging in an html element from the Power Tools, you can even put in code so that you can embed videos from YouTube or other rich media.
Then all you need to do is add a few questions, or a text box for students to write in and when they click on submit, their answers will be sent to your email address or stored online.
Apart from creating e-learning activities, you could use the forms to get feedback on your teaching or to do a range of classroom research tasks. You could even get your students creating class surveys and compiling the results. You can also embed the forms into your own website or blog.
JotForm has a free option which allows for up to 3 forms a month and 100 responses, which should be enough for the average teacher.
Fantastic free tool. There are some tutorials on the site too if you want to dig more deeply into the potential of this tool. Here's movie one showing you how to get started.
I've just spotted this very handy Cloze test creator that allows you to create your own cloze text exercises in either paper based or interactive form. You simply type or past in your text then select either the types of words or the number of spaces between words that you want taken out of the text.
You can also add clues, so that you can provide all the missing words and students just decide which ones go where.
Once you have decided on the number of or type of words you want taken out of the text, you select either text only, for a printable classroom version or interactive to create an interactive online version of the exercise. This is a great little tool for reviewing texts and building learner autonomy, especially the online version. You can ask your students to take texts they have studied in class and create and test themselves on various aspects text just by copying it in and clicking.
Great free tool. Just a shame you can't save the interactive versions you create.
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.
New 3D virtual worlds seem to be appearing almost everyday at the moment and here's another one. It's called Hangout and is still in private beta at the moment, so if you want to have a look around you'll need to apply for an invitation. This one claims to be designed for teens and if you watch the video on the homepage, it does look as though it will appeal to that age group.
It looks like each person will be able to have their own room which they will customise. The graphics look nice and there's a good level of customisation of the various rooms. They are boasting both voice and text chat and the ability to create audio playlists and videos in the rooms.
It doesn't say yet if it will be free, but there is mention of credit card payments on the terms of use, though this might not be for membership.
The terms of use also say that user between 13 and 17 need to get their parents approval to register, so hopefully they are taking security seriously.
Anyway, this could be one to watch if you're looking for an alternative to Second Life.
If you like using authentic video materials with your students but don't have the time to put together the materials then this could be the site for you.
Yolango has a huge collection of short video clips from a whole range of sources and they come complete with transcription and a range of language learning activities for each clip.
Anybody visiting the site can watch the clips and read the transcriptions, but if you register and log in you can also get access to 'fill in the blank', comprehension questions and vocabulary definition type exercises. Students are graded on these exercises and get the results on a scoreboard. This is a great way to set motivating homework for your EFL ESL students and make sure that they do it and see how well they do it.
The collection of clips available is very varied and there are many that would be ideal for Business English students too.
When I first checked this site out a few months back there were some clips that were of a more adult nature, but I can't see these anymore. All the same be careful with less mature students. Certainly a great site for adult learners though.
The presentation attracted quite a lot of attention and comments, one of the main one being a request for the links to the sites I mentioned in the presentation.
So here are links a a quick summary of the sites I mentioned. Inclusion in this list doesn't necessarily imply an endorsement of these sites. The presentation was intended to be informative of what is happening in the world of Web 2.0 and language learning and what is becoming possible. When exploring these sites I still recommend that you be aware of the cautions which I mentioned at the end of the presentation.
Anyway, hope you find these interesting.
Big Think is a video debating website that allows users to exchange opinions on some of the major issues of our time. To get tips and teaching suggestions for this site go to:
Flickr is an image hosting and sharing website that allows you to create an account upload your images. You can also search the huge database of images. The creative commons section is particularly useful for teachers looking for images to use in online media or teaching materials.
Games With a Purpose (GWAP) is a fantastic gaming website that has a variety of different ‘intelligent’ games which can be played collaboratively or competitively with online partners. To find out more see:
Teacher Tube is a video sharing website dedicated to teachers. It allows teachers to upload video and accompanying materials. It provides a ‘safe’ and friendly environment for educational sharing.
Sound transit is a wonderful site that allows users from around the world to share the sounds of their culture and environment. To get tips and teaching suggestions for this site go to:
MonkeySee is a video sharing website for people who want to visually show how to do something. It contains a wide variety of tutorial and lesson videos from teaching dance, how to play musical instruments, through to developing business skills or even how to build a sandcastle. To get tips and teaching suggestions for this site go to:
Podomatic is a site that enables anyone to produce and record their own podcast show. The site also hosts the audio or video media.
280 Slides is an online presentation tool which enables you to develop quite complex slide show presentations and either download them or host and play deliver them online.
Voice thread is a unique site that allows you to post images and add accompanying audio. User are then able to add audio and text comments to the presentation. To get tips and teaching suggestions for this site go to:
Babbel is a vocabulary building site that enables users to develop their vocabulary through multimedia image recognition. The site also has a social network perspective.
Voxswap is a simple social networking site that allows users to log in and teach each other languages.
Guardian Languages is a site that puts language learners in touch with native speakers so that they can get help with their language development. It uses VOIP and video conferencing. Potential teachers can charge learners for lessons.
Palabea allows any speaker of any language to become a teacher and learner. Teachers can set up their own online classrooms and import multimedia materials to share with their students.
CourseLab provides free software which teachers / materials writers and developers can download to create their own multimedia course materials. The software provides a range of interactive activity types. Tasks are easy to construct and no programming knowledge is required.
Great new for those of you who like developing authentic EFL ESL materials around news clips.
CNN is now making available an embed code from each of it's video news clips, so we can now embed these into blog pages or online multimedia materials and develop great authentic and up to date EFL ESL learning materials for our students.
Here's a nice example of what the embedded player looks like.
Any ideas about how you would use this? By all means send in suggestions.
Well apologies to any regular visitors who have noticed the lack of activity her over the last week. This is mainly because my time over the next couple of weeks is being consumed by one of the biggest meetings of English language teachers in the World. The IATEFL annual conference.
I've been working as part of the online editorial team for the event and there are now some very active, discussion forums going on a whole range of ELT related subjects. Over the next week, the face to face event will begin and when it does we hope to be broadcasting and archiving a whole range of the live events including video and audio of interviews, plenaries and workshops.
So if you don't have the time and money to get along to Exeter UK from now until 11th April, then come along and sign on for the free online conference and get the opportunity to share experiences with teachers from all over the world.
iDesktop.tv provides a really useful and user friendly service for anyone who wants to use video clips from sources like YouTube, but doesn't want their students looking around at anything unsuitable, or for anyone who has ever found a really useful clip, only to go back later and find it has moved or been removed. You can use the site to search through a huge collection of videos from various video sharing sites and when you find something you like the site will download and convert it to a file type of your choosing.
The range of file types is great and includes ones suitable for mobile phones and i-pods, so if you want to get your students doing some mobile learning then this is a seriously useful site. The site is free and you can use it without login or registration, though if you do register, it's free and you do get other services too.
Hope you find this useful and by all means leave a comment here if you've tried it.
App in a box is a really interesting site that claims to be able to help you build your own Facebook applications within 5 minutes.
The site offers to help you build 5 different types of applications at the moment. These are:
Text
Mp3
Video
Image
Any combination of the above
They also have 3 new ones planned
Link to information on other social networks
A count down to an event
A quiz type app
If you are keen on getting students using social networks like Facebook and want to connect that to other work you are doing without all the hassle of learning lots of programming skills, then this looks worth a try.
I haven't tried it myself yet, so I'm not sure if it does all that, but will post something ( maybe even with a tutorial on http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/ once I have.
If you try or have tried it, by all means post a comment below and let me know how you got on.
The latest one is Tips for Producing and Managing Flash-based e-Learning Content. In all there are eight ebooks there dating back to 2005 and they are all free to download.
I tried uploading my Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers manual from the PDF format and this is what it came out like. You can download it from here if you are lucky enough to have an iPad Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers iPad edition
When it has been converted the status will change from 'unprocessed' to 'Converted to ePub'. You can then share the link with anyone who wants to read your materials or book on their iPad. You can set privacy status on the file and add tabs and index it. You can even edit the file once it's uploaded using the on site WYSIWYG.
This is a great way to convert content for use on the iPad. It doesn't have to be books of course, you could also use it for worksheets, or notes for your students or books or stories they have created themselves.
It's very simple to use, you just click on the 'Create a New Public Note' button and it launches the text editor and gives your text a unique URL. You then just click on 'Share this Note' to send your URL to any of a number of different social networks or by email.
It isn't clear exactly how many visitors can work on the same text (PrimaryPad supports groups of six) but having too many people working on the same text can often lead to chaos. Sync.in has very hand desktop launcher though, so you can create multiple pads and then get different groups of people using them, just by clicking on the 'New Note' button.
One of the other interesting features is that you can use the 'Time Slider' feature to 'replay' the development of the text. This shows you how and who has developed the text, added and edited parts. This is a great way to track how much work each of your students did on the text.
There are a number of pre-configured ones that you can create and customize, just using the wizard, or you can create a blank one and add what ever features you want from the Toolbox, just by dragging them onto the page.
Once you have your features on the page, you just click on them and edit the properties. It really is very simple to do. You can use JotForm for a whole range of things and it has some very powerful features. As well as adding images, password fields and captcha from the 'Power Tools' section, you can also add payment features, to enable you to charge for services.
Then all you need to do is add a few questions, or a text box for students to write in and when they click on submit, their answers will be sent to your email address or stored online.
You can also add clues, so that you can provide all the missing words and students just decide which ones go where.
This is a great little tool for reviewing texts and building learner autonomy, especially the online version. You can ask your students to take texts they have studied in class and create and test themselves on various aspects text just by copying it in and clicking.
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.
Yolango has a huge collection of short video clips from a whole range of sources and they come complete with transcription and a range of language learning activities for each clip.
