Learning Kids Games

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Second Earth | Life

Just spotted this very interesting video about a mash up between Second Life and Google Earth. Best to watch and listen to the video to find out more.

This is a really nice development and is going to make those geography field trips from the classroom so much more interesting. I found the video on the Hackshaven Youtube channel, where you can find quite a few more videos if your interested in Second Life and its educational potential. Hackshaven also has a pretty interesting blog about Second Life called Hack's Haven. Some interesting articles there and also some pretty interesting Education related Delicious links too.

So if you have some spare time and want to keep up with what' happening in Second Life, it's well worth a look.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Create Flashcard Packs

I've been trying out Muchobeets (strange name) free flashcard creator, and apart from a few hiccups, it looks like a useful tool.

You can choose from three different types:

Regular - Topic related notes that should help you to remember facts and figures etc.
Vocabulary - These are for recording and revising vocabulary using a word with an example and definition.
Picture - These enable you to upload images, which user then click on to find the word / sentence associated with the image. The students then see the images and click on them to find the word / text.

I tried creating some image ones, but my images were much too large, so be sure to use small image files if you choose to create these.

They are very quick and easy to create (you do have to register first though) and once you've created a pack of flashcards you can either email them to yourself or your students.

There are actually quite a lot of packs already there including the 'Hot SAT List' which students might find pretty useful.

This looks like a pretty simple but useful free tool for vocabulary revision or revision of any sort. I particularly like that you can email the revision packs to students.

I hope you can use it.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Merging and Filtering Information Feeds

I've just been having a look at a tool called Grazer which can help you to stream line your RSS subscriptions and filter the results. This can be really helpful if you are looking for information on a specific topic and drawing on a wide range of sources.

Here' an example I created which searches all three of my own blogs and delivers results of postings which include information or resources on video. You can then create a widget like the one below which can be imported into your blog, homepage or social network profile.

Learning technology teacher development blog

Quick Shout

Daily English Activities

Grazer has some free options as well as paid for ones. Basically paid for will give you a lot more storage of what it refers to as reading lists (a collections of feeds) and streams. The streams can be filtered around specific topics and then used to create widgets.

It sounds much more complicated than it is, so it's worth watching some of their video tutorials to find out how easy it is. You can find them in the section called 'Tour'.

You'll have to part worth an email to register and start creating your lists and streams, but they seem to be taking care of people's privacy and information, so that's good.

On the whole this is a pretty handy tool, Shame you have to pay for the premium services, but I guess that's life.

Hope you find it useful.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Thursday, December 18, 2008

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.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Recording Skype Calls

I haven't had a chance to try this yet as there isn't a MAC version available at present, but it does look like a very useful addition for anyone who uses Skype on a PC and wants to record calls. If you're wondering why anyone might want to do this I did write a posting for teachers on why this might be handy (See: Skype Part 1 Recording Audio) for creating your own audio materials etc.

Anyway, the Skype Call Recorder is free and at least according to their website blurb seems pretty good. It can record more than one stream at a time into separate files, which might be handy and then saves them as mp3.

There are some good installation instructions on the site too. You can download the whole thing as a zip file and at only 1.4 Mb, it seems like it may well be worth checking out.

Let's hope there's soon something like this for MAC users too.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Plagiarism Checker

Ever suspect that your students work might not be all their own work? Ever feel that someone is copying your work and then publishing it online?

Well now you have a way of checking. The Plagiarism Checker is a handy online tool that you can use to check out who is copying who. Just cut and paste some of the suspect text into the text field and click on the 'Check the paper' button.

Very simple, free and quick. I hope it's useful.

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Nik Peachey Read More..

Resources for Continuing Professional Development

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.

You can find more information at: http://www.teachers.tv/cpdleaders

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.

Hope you find these useful

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Nik Peachey Read More..