tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70591590736027939182012-03-01T20:47:17.256+02:00Teaching EFL with technologiesBaiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.comBlogger113125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-59753187017478567472012-02-24T21:59:00.000+02:002012-02-25T20:31:54.581+02:002012-02-25T20:31:54.581+02:00

MentorMob is a fresh web service for creating a series of related websites on any topic one may fancy. It is a form of content curation done by assembling a list of web links on one topic. They are arranged in a playlist which can be viewed step by step or by going straight to the chosen website. It is easy to use and available for free. MentorMob is a very convenient tool to the teachers who

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-34442382394914720732012-02-05T21:16:00.000+02:002012-02-24T22:00:55.607+02:002012-02-24T22:00:55.607+02:00

I learned about SideVibe website from my Twitter PLN (@lelapin). It attracted my attention immediately both by its appearance and fantastic usability. You have to download its toolbar and then you can start using it for practically every web page that you think can be applied in your classes. SideVibe is a web based teaching tool which replaces the old-fashioned handouts by putting the

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-21068101619461594192012-02-02T17:54:00.002+02:002012-02-02T17:54:28.060+02:002012-02-02T17:54:28.060+02:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yggg/2141154996/ This is a guest post by Marina Salsbury who has written articles for my blog before here and here. * * * * * * * * * Presentations play a big role in the business world today. Effective presentations are able to convey a rich amount of information to a large audience in a cohesive manner. In order to be able to put together a proper

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-52003627228334156792012-01-28T14:31:00.000+02:002012-01-28T22:43:13.866+02:002012-01-28T22:43:13.866+02:00

There is abundance of search engines available and most of us resort to using Google (and I love it too). There are, however, quite a lot of new, less popular tools that help us find information on the web. I have listed here some of my favourite search tools, each for its own unique features. Twurdy is a great tool for students because it sorts the findings according to the readability level

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-26262312609394566092012-01-21T10:50:00.001+02:002012-01-29T19:51:38.254+02:002012-01-29T19:51:38.254+02:00

Image by OLD SKOOL Cora A few days ago I did an activity with my students which has been a little disregarded lately - the webquest. I remember at the dawn of using computers for learning, webquests were rather popular possibly because other web activities had not been "invented" yet. Webquests meant students could get access to the computers and have a jolly time online, especially because

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-964663923148154542012-01-11T18:39:00.000+02:002012-01-11T22:38:36.668+02:002012-01-11T22:38:36.668+02:00

I learned about this fantastic game accidentally while visiting the teflgeek's blog. Great blog with a lot of useful ideas! I immediately saw how I could use it with my students for revising certain grammar or vocabulary items. The game is played in teams, four to be precise, and the goal is to win as many squares as possible. I made a grid of 30 squares with numbers for the questions and

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-45978270980930763162011-12-30T13:12:00.000+02:002011-12-30T14:35:20.012+02:002011-12-30T14:35:20.012+02:00

Happy New Year! (mp3)

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-88731948159367301582011-12-24T18:18:00.000+02:002012-01-22T15:54:46.232+02:002012-01-22T15:54:46.232+02:00

This is a Christmas gift for me and you - a guest post by Marina Salsbury who has already been my guest before. Thank you Marina! Google+ has formally been around for less than a year, but it's already turning into the online social network of choice for educators. For language teachers, especially those who teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Google+ can be used as a tool to

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-16304419540468742372011-12-22T21:11:00.001+02:002011-12-23T08:20:23.323+02:002011-12-23T08:20:23.323+02:00

When I first wrote about Papershow digital toolkit, I promised to give my feedback about the tool. Now I have tried it out in the classroom with my students and here are some of my thoughts. Basically, the tool consists of a digital notepad and a bluetooth pen. What is written in the notepad is seen on the screen. The teacher can choose whether to show the pad at the beginning of the activity

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-44004563507298549622011-12-07T19:37:00.001+02:002011-12-07T20:38:34.469+02:002011-12-07T20:38:34.469+02:00

I have tried using rather many websites which are created for posting sticky notes but recently I realised that my favourite site is linoit.com. Here are two examples how I used it with my students. The ones who are a little more experienced digital users (14 years old) were asked to post their answers to a simple question about their future jobs. We had just finished studying the theme about

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-81021329909801767602011-11-19T09:37:00.001+02:002011-11-19T10:09:03.611+02:002011-11-19T10:09:03.611+02:00

Richard Gresswell, the @inglishteacher, has invited the teachers to share their bite-size lesson activities. The activity should be done with minimal resources, just some paper and a pen. Great idea and useful at that! Here is mine, adaptable to any age. Spy Adam! The aim of the activity – to practise describing someone’s daily activities. 1. Divide the students into 3

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-74470229130476039802011-11-12T12:52:00.001+02:002011-11-12T13:10:34.192+02:002011-11-12T13:10:34.192+02:00

We all have our favourite web tools and technologies that we prefer to use in our work. This is the word cloud of my favourites at this moment. It is highly possible that in a few months my preferences will be different. I use Weebly and Posterous for class blogs. Vocaroo is indispensable for audio homework. Penzu is great for student online writing (journals, essays, reflections) I can't

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-70049227870562194152011-11-10T19:58:00.000+02:002011-11-11T23:07:31.318+02:002011-11-11T23:07:31.318+02:00

Have you ever posted a message on a public forum? Why did you post it? What did you want to say? What made you choose the particular forum - topic relevance, familiar people or urgent / desperate need for help? Whenever we decide to make an appearance on a public site, we have two options - be invisible, i.e. anonymous or reveal our name. These are two totally different conditions which

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-86219754233236924802011-10-26T19:53:00.004+03:002011-11-11T23:24:32.879+02:002011-11-11T23:24:32.879+02:00

First I saw Brad's post and then read Beth Crumpler's blog. A new challenge from my PLN! What easily carries me away is an opportunity to use a simple web tool for playing with words creating something that has never existed, then eye the result. The challenge was to use Tagxedo and make word clouds showing blog and Twitter vocabulary. Here is what I got. My blog word cloud. No surprises. This

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-88822035475362654552011-10-25T18:57:00.000+03:002011-10-26T17:31:39.218+03:002011-10-26T17:31:39.218+03:00

This has been going on for some time already - blaming PowerPoint for boring, bullet-pointed presentations that make the audience fall asleep or inwardly burst with indignation. I beg to differ. I don't think PowerPoint is the root of all evil. I may not have plunged into defending PowerPoint if not for the endless stream of verbal abuse of this popular, accessible, functional tool, so widely

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-91296112107134727632011-10-15T23:12:00.000+03:002011-10-15T23:14:33.474+03:002011-10-15T23:14:33.474+03:00

My guest today is Marina Salsbury who planned on becoming a teacher since high school, but found her way instead into online writing after college. She writes around the Web about everything from education to exercise. Marina's article focuses on the problems and challenges in language learning which college students and adults face if English is not their native language. image by

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-562746105987333052011-10-11T22:40:00.000+03:002011-10-11T22:44:59.253+03:002011-10-11T22:44:59.253+03:00

Reading of the great post by Ceri Jones on her blog Close Up made me think about the situation in my professional life which has kept recurring again and again - one and the same lesson plan in two different classes of the same age never works in the same way and never produces the same result. Ceri sees the grounds of the different outcomes in the seating of her students. Sadly, it is out

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-45513018411227847572011-09-27T22:58:00.002+03:002011-10-04T21:46:20.735+03:002011-10-04T21:46:20.735+03:00

Spot 12 differences in pictures No.1 and No.2 - a task for primary level but anyone can try :-) Inspired by my PLN. Picture No.1 Picture No.2 The question: What was being built in pictures No.1 and No.2? The answer is here: Picture No.3

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-29583310816798597602011-09-17T15:30:00.005+03:002011-10-02T19:10:22.543+03:002011-10-02T19:10:22.543+03:00

I have prepared this post with regard to the teacher training session when I am going to consult the teachers on creating online vocabulary activities for students to be used either in class or independently, at home. There was time when only Hot Potatoes was available for creating interactive quizzes and it was a really cool program back then. Now we can choose from a vast variety of

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-2896870953053194932011-09-07T18:12:00.002+03:002011-10-15T23:13:43.355+03:002011-10-15T23:13:43.355+03:00

This is a great moment in the life of my blog because I am having my first guest writer! Natalie Hunter grew up wanting to be a teacher, and is addicted to learning and research. As a result she is grateful for the invention of the internet because it allows her to spend some time outside, rather than just poring through books in a library. She is fascinated by the different methodologies for

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-52311523355861462432011-08-28T13:43:00.000+03:002011-12-22T22:06:04.612+02:002011-12-22T22:06:04.612+02:00

My school administration surprised me by giving me a present to be used in the classroom in the new school year. The present is a digital writing set consisting of a special interactive notebook and a Bluetooth digital pen - PAPERSHOW. image from geek-speak.co.uk Its version Papershow for Teachers developed for and by teachers can be viewed here.  The idea of the tool is to enable the

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-91779929169187048052011-08-15T11:50:00.004+03:002011-08-15T12:26:19.755+03:002011-08-15T12:26:19.755+03:00

image by jchip8 from http://www.pixdaus.com While I was thinking of writing about my favourite back-to-school activities, I realized that none of them are downright my creations, they have all been gathered over the years from different websites, jotted down at seminars, learned at conferences, heard form colleagues. So what I ended up doing was I decided to post a digest of web links to

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-66710488949404436252011-08-11T17:56:00.009+03:002011-08-12T00:24:56.971+03:002011-08-12T00:24:56.971+03:00

Writing is one of the most difficult parts of the English exam for non-native speakers. While they are coping with speaking and reading tasks quite easily, writing exam may cause much distress and anxiety to a number of students. Teachers can do a lot to help their students to prepare for the exam. Here are a few suggestions how you can raise students' confidence by using short and effective

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-18910290384822425892011-07-27T00:19:00.003+03:002011-07-27T08:31:01.707+03:002011-07-27T08:31:01.707+03:00

This may sound flimsy to a native speaker but there are words in English which do not stick around no matter how hard you try memorizing them. Let me give you an example. Here are a couple of words which took years to settle down in my memory - procrastinate and serendipity. Procrastinate has always sounded ominous and evil to me and for a long while my brain could not accept its simple and

Baiba Svencahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02551667101154221124noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7059159073602793918.post-27650625726772661142011-07-16T17:58:00.004+03:002011-07-17T15:00:16.011+03:002011-07-17T15:00:16.011+03:00

An easy way to hold students' attention and develop their speaking skills is the use of advertisements. Hide the text or other objects which reveal the identity of the product advertised in the picture. Display the ad on the whiteboard / screen and ask your students to take a look at it. Give them a few minutes to get an overall impression and then start asking your questions to provoke a

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