Some time back in March 08 I wrote a posting on ideas for creating personalised Personalised flashcards for EFL ESL activities. That posting used a site called FaceinHole which had some nice images that you could upload you or your student's picture to.
I've just spotted another site called PhotoFunia that also has a nice collection that you could use with many of the same ideas. Here's a few examples that you or your students could use as prompts to create stories around. You could also get them to create a completely fake biography. Here's mine. See if you can decide which parts are true!!!
Did you know I used to be an astronaut?
Before I became a teacher I was in fashion.
I also recorded a CD, but I only sold one copy. Wonder who bought it!
Of course I've made some pretty influential friends too.
And like every celebrity I had my own chat show
And er! Well I can dream, can't I?
Well I hope you and your students enjoy this site. It is of course free, but has some advertising on so watch out for that.
I've just been struggling to write another activity for my Daily English Activities blog. I spent most of an hour browsing through the Urban Dictionary, another user created record of the modern English language.
On the one hand I thought that it was a complete waste of time in terms of finding any usable materials for EFL ESL students, but on the other hand I found it to be a really fascinating doorway into our modern culture and lifestyle.
The Urban dictionary is largely a user generated and edited collection of 'invented' words, some of which are gradually becoming part of our mainstream language, such as 'muffin tops' and 'spin doctor', whereas others .... well who knows? Will mass merchanditis and boyfriend drop soon become part of your everyday vocabulary? In the end I decided to go ahead and use the site, as I thought that the cultural information in the content was so valuable. These are the word and definitions that I've chosen to use, and I think they give some valuable insights into our modern culture. Hope you enjoy them.
I've just been playing with a really nice tool called Xtranormal that enables you to create nice animated movies. You can create a scene an a series of movies simply by choosing back drops and characters, writing your script for them and then just drop on different actions and sound effects.
This is an example that took me about 10 - 15 mins to create (Took me a while to work out that you had to write the script first - Der!!) In many ways this is a similar tool to one of my long term favourites DFilm, which I wrote about some time ago in Make you own animated movies, though this is perhaps even better as the characters take your script and actually say it using the wonders of text to speech.
Xtranormal is a great tool for generating listening and writing activities, as well as being a lot of fun. I hope to be publishing some teaching tips for it soon.
At present the site is still n beta and it says that it is free to use for now, which makes me think you should use it now as they might start charging soon.
Well anyone who keeps up with this blog on a regular basis will know that last Sunday (26th Oct 08) was my debut as a chat show host in Second Life.
Firstly I have to thank Gavin Dudeney from The Consultants-E for being my first guest and of course for sponsoring the series which will be taking place on his Edunation Island. Here's a quick clip of Gavin telling me about his 'Killer app' in Second Life and how he got pulled into working in Second Life.
The experience of being the show host was actually very enjoyable, even if somewhat surreal, with a native American appearing in loin cloth in the middle of the coffee table and at one point a young girl avatar running through the wall and into the audience!
Gavin was a very informative guest and talked about some of the difficulties and challenges of teaching language in Second Life as well as some of the amazing potential that virtual worlds offer for education.
We hope over the coming few days to be able to make the complete audio available for anyone who missed the event and wants to hear what Gavin had to say. Here are just some of the questions that Gavin answered:
What goes on at Edunation Islands 1 - 3 and what kind of people / institution are setting up business here?
Who comes on your TT courses? What’s thee typical profile?
The course uses Moodle with SL. Why the combination and will SL make Moodle redundant?
Could you tell us about the free teaching tools you’ve created?
Do you think SL is a viable place to for commercial language schools to make money from teaching?
Is communication in virtual worlds a new ‘genre’ of communication? Are the skills needed different?
It's often said that online learning isn’t suitable for beginners. Can beginners learn languages online in SL?
How can you over come the sense of coldness and lack of reaction while teaching in SL?
How should languages be taught in SL? Should schools be replicating classrooms?
What future developments would you like to see? What would you ask Linden Lab to develop to make language teaching more effective?
Is there a ‘killer app’ or characteristic that made you want to dedicate so much time to SL?
Have you thought about SL competitors and which ones would you consider shifting to?
For anyone thinking about getting involved in Second Life Education then check out the information on The Consultants-E website where you can find out about their training courses for teachers. Also worth checking out is Gavin's Blog That'SLife.
If you or your students need to edit photographs or pictures quickly, easily and for free, then DrPic.com could be the place for you. You can crop, resize add text change colours and create a number off effects with the real minimum of ease. You simply upload a picture from your computer and start to play.
You can also download the images to your hard drive or upload them to the web and all without any registration or passwords.
DrPic is a great tool for creating your own flash cards, adding text to images or just giving your students some hands on practice at doing their own photo editing. I'll certainly be using this myself.
Back in my classroom days I used to play a simulation game which my students always enjoyed. They were given a budget and country to run and they had to work in groups to decide how they would spend the budget to protect and develop their country.
Cyber Nations seems to have taken that game one step further and created an online simulation which students can play over a period of time. Actually 'one step further' is a bit of an understatement, as once players have created their nation and started to develop it and decide on the budget, taxes and governmental policies etc. they are then launched into competition with other nations that other players have created. They have the chance to develop alliances, form trade partnerships and even attack or aid other countries.
This is a wonderful way to get students talking, reading, thinking and experimenting. You could either get students to form nations in small groups, alone, or you could have a class nation which you ruled democratically as a class project making new decisions each class. The site is free, but it does require a password to register and activate your account.
Hope you enjoy this and find the time to get your students playing it.
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 spotted another site called PhotoFunia that also has a nice collection that you could use with many of the same ideas.
Here's a few examples that you or your students could use as prompts to create stories around. You could also get them to create a completely fake biography. Here's mine. See if you can decide which parts are true!!!
