I've just been creating some training tasks and materials which I'll be using later this week. As part of that I've created a few easy 'How to' sheets showing some basic functions a four Web 2.0 type apps and have published these on Scribd. There will be more of these to come later, along with the exploratory tasks that go with them, but for now here are four how to sheets that you can either use online or download / photocopy to use with students or trainee teachers.
How to create online presentations and import videos from YouTube using 280Slides
This has been a pretty busy week for me, mainly because I delivered my first online technology training presentation (8th September 2009) using the Adobe Connect Pro platform. I have to thank Jürgen Wagner and Verena Heckmann, e-learning specialists at the Landesinstitut für Pädagogik and Medien in Saarbrücken Germany, for offering me this opportunity to get online and promote and share some of the technological tools and activities I believe can be so helpful to EFL and ESL teachers.
The complete two hour session was recorded and can be viewed online (warts and all), so if you would like to hear me talking and displaying some of these tools then you can go to:
My advice is to jump the first 20 mins (Me defining Web 2.0) and get straight into the good stuff (the tools and how to use them).
I also prepared a 53 page booklet to go with presentation. and you can look over it below or you can download your own copy here: Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers (8Mb PDF)
Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers Feel free to print and share the booklet or sections of it if you find it useful and by all means leave a comment if you have any suggestions for the next edition.
I will be meeting up with Dennis Newson and anyone else who is interested to chat about my experiences in Second Life and what I see as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to delivering English language instruction there.
I just came across this collection of fun photo adapting tools and thought this one that enables you to create a 'Wanted' poster from your own image could be a useful one to use with students or on teacher training courses.
It's really easy to use, you just upload an image and then write in your own caption. You can then download and print the images or add them to blogs or web pages.
There are a number of ways you could use this with your students:
As a writing prompt - Get them to create their own 'Wanted' poster with their own captions and then exchange the posters and get someone else in the class to write the story of how they became 'Wanted'.
As a speaking prompt - Get students to create and print their wanted poster and then create their own fictional story of how they became 'Wanted'. See which students can create the best story.
For self-evaluation and reflection - Get students to think about their weaknesses and select one weakness they would like to work on improving . They should add this as the caption, then get them to think of how improving that weakness will help them and add this as the reward (they will need to be concise). They can then print their 'Wanted' posters and hang them up in class around the walls as reminders of what they need to focus on. The students could then look at each other's posters and offer each other tips and advice on how they can improve. This can work well with teacher training sessions too.
I hope you make some useful wanted posters and be sure to check out some of the other ways in which you can adapt your images here. Do leave a comment if you came up with some good ideas for how to use them and let me know which ones are your favourites.
Shaping the Way We Teach English is a fantastic resource that I came across recently. It's free and accessible through The Online Language Center of the University of Oregon and it is a pretty complete teacher training course that has videos , viewing tasks, transcripts, observation checklists and even recommended supplementary web based reading.
The videos for the course are all on YouTube and can either be watched online or it is recommended that they are downloaded using http://keepvid.com/ for anyone with a slower connection.
Most of the videos ( there is one for each of the 14 modules) is about 10 -15 mins long and the quality is good. The makers of the course have used a range of teachers from around the world and you can see them working with their classes and listen to what they have to say about the way they teach.
Here's a useful example on reflective teaching
These videos and tasks could be used for pre-service or even in service teacher training, or as a self access resource for teachers who want some informal development.
As I said. Shaping the Way We Teach English is a fantastic resource, it's free and it's very complete. I hope you enjoy using it.
Sunday 3rd May 09 (GMT 18.00 = 11.00 PST) will see the next in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational 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, author and ELT guru Jeremy Harmer. Jeremy's books and writings have introduced a generation of teachers to ELT. He is also a regular conference speaker and musician.
This is a chance to come along and participate in discussion with one of the UK's most influential ELT writers.
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
Just been looking through the various guest writers that have appeared on the British Council | BBC TeachingEnglish website and comparing some of the very different views on the future of English language teaching.
There's an interesting cross section here. I often wonder how long a future we have and how long it will be before voice activated translation systems can replace the need to learn another language. I wonder how many of us or our students would still have the discipline to learn a language for the joy of really being ale to speak it, if they didn't have to????
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.
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!
It's great to see that Teachers TV has released a series of video and support materials for for CPD leaders | Teacher Trainers. There's a good collection of quite varied material for the development of both primary and secondary teachers.
Some of the clips look quite long (up to 30 mins) for web delivery, but you can download them if you register and log in. There are also a range of support materials to go with each of the topics explored in the videos.
There are some interesting ones there now on assessment and next month they will be uploading videos and presentations on ICT and modern foreign languages, all of which sound pretty interesting.
There is also a group for CPD leaders which you might think of joining if you'd like to get advice or do some networking with other training professionals.
This is a useful resource. It's a shame they don't offer an embed code so these could be embedded in other materials, but I guess you can't have everything for free.
I've just been browsing through the website of the Centre for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) and although it couldn't possibly be described as fun and sexy, there is a lot of potentially really useful information there especially for anyone involved in teacher training and development.
There are 72 quick Q & A digests that deal with a broad range of subjects from methodology to program design and technology.
There's also a handy Tools section that has guidance for Instructors and Program developers.
You can email in a question and get it answered at Ask CAELA and even sign up for a free newsletter.
This Sunday 30th November (GMT 18.00 = 10.00 PST) will see the second in our series of 'Coffee With ..' educational chat shows on Edunation III 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 Kyle Mawer from the British Council and finding out about the work he has been doing designing materials in the Second Life Teen Grid and about the forth coming opening of the British Council's island in the main grid.
Kyle describes the work of the British Council as "both an iconic virtual representation of Great Britain, and a rich setting in which learners of English can further their learning of the language and culture of the UK as well as raising awareness of visitors to the work and opportunities provided by the British Council."
Kyle is particularly interested in using the medium of gaming as a learning tool and adapts free online computer games for use with his classes. The games, materials and lesson plans he’s found, developed and successfully used have been posted on the wikispace he runs at http://kylemawer.wikispaces.com
If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places. The show starts at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 8 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 10.00 PST and 19.00 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
This is just a quick announcement about a free event for educators in Second Life. On Sunday 26th October at GMT = 18.00 (GMT is 7 hours ahead of Second Life time, so that's 11.00 to 12.00 PDT)
This will be a pretty informal event and there will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and find out more about the work of one of the main innovators of ELT and teacher training in Second Life. You'll also be able to find out a bit more about some of the free educational tools Gavin has been developing for use in Second Life.
If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places.
To find out more about Gavin's work in Second Life, Check out his blog That'SLife
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 trying out the beta Lip synching feature of Second Life in preparation for a chat show I'll be doing this coming Sunday on Edunation III. I'm hoping to be able to create a video recording of the show and decided to see how well I could record video and use the lip synching feature to make it all look more realistic.
Well here are the results.
I'm actually quite impressed. I think it does add an element of realism that has been missing and greatly increases the potential of Second Life for creating Machinima or any other video or animation projects. If you want to have a go with the lip synching, this video shows you how to switch it on.
To create the movie I actually used two computers each with a seperate avatar on. I then used one avatar as the 'actor' and the other avatar to record the sound and video (recording was done on a MAC running I-ShowU) I then edited it with I-Movie and uploaded directly to YouTube from there.
If you would like to come along and watch the show and join in the discussion, then go along to Edunation III and click the sign-up terminals or email Gavin at: dudeney@theconsultants-e.com. The event is free, but we are limited to 100 places.
I've finally found the time to edit and upload a video presentation I created for a training course here in Morocco. The focus of the presentation is on how setting up personal homepages and using RSS feeds can save teachers time and keep them better informed.
The catalyst for finally getting this done, is a discussion that is taking place between the Learning With Computers group (EFL teachers mainly based in South America, but increasingly becoming more international). If you want to be involved in this discussion you can sign up to join the group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/learningwithcomputers/ You can also follow the discussion on their blog at: Learning with Computers
If you are interested in creating your own personal homepage or doing training to help other teachers create homapages, you can find the tasks and instructions that I refer to here: Creating a personal homepage
Hope you find this useful and that you join the discussion.
Videos of teacher working in the ELT classroom is pretty difficult to come by, so this makes this series of videos from the British Council that much more valuable.
As you can see from this example the videos have footage from the real practicing teachers accompanied by expert commentary. This is useful stuff for anyone involved in teacher training.
I just spotted this rather remarkable example of an English video lesson for Japanese students. It shows some rather remarkable use of music and includes a revolutionary drilling method.
Watch, learn and enjoy!
Try this at home and you might also get fit too.
As someone who has always believed in the benefits of drilling new language, it's great to see that the ancient art still finds a place in our modern world!
But on a more serious note you might find this useful if you're involved in teacher training and want to get some discussion going around the theme of drills.
There will be more of these to come later, along with the exploratory tasks that go with them, but for now here are four how to sheets that you can either use online or download / photocopy to use with students or trainee teachers.
