Educational Technology in ELT

Vocal Recall: Audio Feedback with QR Codes

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 17:24:00 +0000

I have just found an amazing app with a solid pedagogical idea behind! So I’m back blog writing after almost 5 years!!!

The app is called Vocal Recall @vocalrecallapp and allows you to upload audio directly to preprinted stickers of QR codes.

This is how it works: you need the mobile app (Android and iOS) and the printed QR code stickers, which you can buy from Amazon or print yourself with the free QR Codes sent to you by email.

1- You record a message up to 5 minutes with the app.

2- You scan the QR code with the app to link the code with that recording.

3- You put the QR code sticker anywhere to be decoded with any QR code reader to listen to it.

A test

Scan this QR code to see how it works.

Some ideas for the classroom:

As a teacher:

Add a sticker to any print classroom materials to include oral instructions.

Add a ticker to students’ work to provide personalised feedback.

Add a sticker to each station in a treasure hunt for oral instructions.

As a student:

Add a sticker to a book you have read with your oral book review and recommendation.

Add a sticker to a project artifact explaining what you did.

Create a self-assessment sticker for any work or period of work.

Considerations:

I believe the value of the app is in the ready-made QR codes and the ease of use. You could of course make your own QR codes one by one, but that would take ages! Even if you order the QR codes from Amazon the cost is minimal, as the app itself is free.

I will definitely be trying this out with my own students as from March and promise to come back with more ideas for implementation.

Organizing resources for teachers and teacher trainers

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:38:00 +0000

As a teacher and teacher trainer I have found that I need to have multiple resources, tools or websites at hand, easily available. I have over the past years experimented with a few different tools so here they are!

One possibility is using a startpage to organize the resources you regularly use.

Protopage

Symbaloo

Another possibility is to create an interactive bulletin board with these resources.

Padlet

You can also use a social bookmarking tool to create lists of resources

Diigo

Listly

Other tools to organize your resources

Live binders

Pearltrees

And last but not least, when you need to work with multiple tabs open in your browser, there are extensions or plug ins that allow you to save a “session” and re open it whenever you need it.

Session Buddy for Chrome

Multiple Tab Handler for Firefox

How to article for for Safari

How to article for Internet Explorer

Video-related tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 16:18:00 +0000

I have been working with my students on several projects that involve the making and editing of videos. So I have decided to share some of the tools I recommend.

Video repositories

There are several websites where you can find videos, You Tube being the most famous one, but not the only one.
You tube

Vimeo

Teacher Tube

An interesting tool to remove all ads around You Tube videos is Safe Share TV

Downloaders

Some videos may be gone when you need them or you may want to avoid an internet access failure from spoiling your plans.

You Tube Downloader is a free piece of software that you install in your computer and easily downloads You Tube videos

Save Vid is an online downloader if you do not want to install anything on your pc.

Editing tools

There is a variety of other tools to enhance You Tube videos in several different ways.

Tube chop allows you to choose a part of a longer video and save it.

Sometimes you need to add captions or subtitles
Caption tube

You tube itself

Blubbr.tv allows you to create quizzes based on videos

Here’s a tutorial
And here's an example based on a Blended Learning video.

If you want to edit your videos in order to create your own remixes, these are some options
Windows Live Movie Maker
Creaza Movie editor

Hope you have found some new tools to solve your video-related problems!

Isil Boy on M-learning: is it a portable circus or just an illusion?

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 26 May 2013 13:21:00 +0000

My fifth post in this series related to technology-related IATEFL talks is Isil Boy's take on Mobile Learning. Again a post full of resources for you to explore!

Joe Dale on Mobile Technologies

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:59:00 +0000

Joe Dale: Combining hardware, software and mobile technologies to support classroom interaction, participation, distance learning and success : what really happens!

The fourth review in my IATEFL series is for Joe Dale's fast-paced talk about mobile technologies, especially iPads. There were so many resources mentioned in this talk that I'm sure I missed some!

Here are my notes and references.

View the story "Joe Dale: Combining hardware, software and mobile technologies to support classroom interaction, participation,..." on Storify

Kristina Smith on Autonomy in Online and Blended Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 12 May 2013 18:39:00 +0000

The third in my series of IATEFL related posts is the review, tweets, notes and resources from Kristina Smith's session, which I thoroughly enjoyed!

Paul Braddock on The Flipped Classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sat, 04 May 2013 15:13:00 +0000

Next on my sharing list of IATEFL talks is Paul Braddock's take on The Flipped Classroom. A very interesting walk through theory and implementation ideas.

Huw Jarvis on Learner Autonomy, CALL, MALU and e-acquisition

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:43:00 +0000

I have recently returned from IATEFL conference in Liverpool. It's been hectic, insightful and fun. And I have decided to share the notes for some of the talks I attended. In fact, for each talk you will find the abstract, related tweets, presentation slides or videos and other reviews, which I have collected using Storify, a tool I will review soon!

So here's the first.... and more to come

Storytelling websites and apps

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:21:00 +0000

Storytelling in all its forms (traditional pen and paper or digital) has always been a favourite of mine. I always include some kind of storytelling activity with my classes so I decided to write about some available tools for use online (digital storytelling) or in the classroom to support pen and paper storytelling.

To support storytelling in the classroom

Flickr Tell a story in 5 frames

Sets of 5 images that make up a story. Assign a set or have your students choose one and write the story.

Story Starter Jr

Story Starter

Random creators of story starters

Rory’s storytelling cubes $1.99 for iPhone and iPad

Dice with images. Simply shake your iPhone to roll the cubes and create a story using all 9 face-up images. Thanks to Graham Stanley for this one!

Story dice $1.99 for iPhone and iPad

Story Dice is a creative tool to prompt ideas for plot, character, and setting. This idea generator can be used effectively for both written and oral storytelling.

Story Shout $0.99 for iPhone and iPad

Story Shout is an innovative fun game for iPhone and iPad that challenges players to invent and tell stories out loud whilst prompted by a set of onscreen images (glyphs/icons).

Tell a tale Free for iPad

You’ll get the first and the last sentence of a story, three pictures are added and the rest is up to you.

Writer’s Hat $0.99 for iPhone and iPad

Writer's Hat is an ideas generator to inspire creative writing, oral literacy and imaginative thinking.

To be used online

Pic Lits

I love Pic Lits. You can read my previous post on it for more details

Folding Story

Folding Story is a web game in which players write one line of a story, fold the paper, and pass it on to the next person.

Zooburst Free for iPad and website

ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that lets anyone easily create his or her own augmented reality 3D pop-up books.

Story wheel $2.99 for iPhone and iPad

1-4 players can create a story. Start by spinning the wheel to get a picture. Next, record your voice as you develop a story with that picture. Each player will build upon the story with a new picture. When done, you can listen to your story and share your creations online, or email them to family and friends.

Story Patch $2.99 for iPad

Story Patch is a new application for the iPad that children can use to create their own picture books. With hundreds of included images, easy-to-use controls, and the ability to import photos.

Scribz Free for iPhone and iPad

Scribz is a simple, creative and funny way to share short stories. Make artistic storyboards with your iPhone: add 3 pictures, write a few captions for the storytelling and use the « film noir » template to share the story on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook or even by mail.

Storyrobe Free for iPhone and iPad

This is a really great app for making photo slide shows with voice recording.

Tellagami Free for iPhone and iPad

Tellagami is a quick and easy way to create and share a fun short story called a Gami. Just select and customize a character. Personalize your Gami with photos and your own voice. Then share your Gami with friends.

Thumbstruck Free for iPhone and iPad

Thumbstruck is a social networking/ storytelling application that allows users to improvisationally write stories together through three methods of interaction: Choose my words, Use my words, and Fuse my words.

There are other tools that I have used over and over like

Voicethread
Storybird
Zimmer Twins
Xtranormal
Bubblr
Bookr

I have already written about these tools in a previous post which you can read here

Hope you have found something to spice up your storytelling activities! If you have any suggestions for other tools or how to use them, please leave a comment.

#ELTchat: the loss of eltchat.com – Plan B

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:50:00 +0000

#ELTchat: the loss of eltchat.com – Plan B

This is a re-post of an original post from Marisa Constatinides and as I am deeply in awe of the #ELTchat project, I am sharing it with you.

For the last – well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on – a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues – which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.

Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.

And that is how #ELTchat was created.

The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.

A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011, he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.

We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.

eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.

The news is really upsetting.

The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment

We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.

But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet

And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations

We will be back with a vengeance

We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

Vicky Saumell

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers, teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers, reposted this on your blog

If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

Olympic Games fever! Apps, games and ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 14:33:00 +0000

With the London 2012 Olympic Games about to start, I could not escape Olympics fever. So I decided to collect some useful resources for the classroom.

Games

Word Hurdles is a simple sports vocabulary recognition game.

Ball or not? is a classification vocabulary game

Sports Mixer is a simple game in which you have to dress the character for a specific sport

Sports Maze is a simple listening game to recognize names of sports

Things for Sports is a game in which you have to identify sports equipment for different sports.

Quizzes

Olympic Sports quiz

English Club Olympics-related quizzes

Project ideas

AtoZ Teacher stuff ideas

An educator’s guide to the Olympics

Project Britain ideas

Teacher Planet ideas

Visuals

Olympic Sports Flashcards

Olympic Sports Bingo cards

Energy in sports

London 2012 Torch relay map

Videos and animations

London 2012 education programme has a collection of very interesting short videos

How often do you play sports? is a video of kids talking about sports. There are related worksheets to download.

Athletics is an animated text and quiz about the sport

The First Marathon is an animated short story with an accompanying worksheet

Olympics people in numbers

Other resources

BBC Olympics coverage

Choosing the host city

London 2012 logo

I am sure you will find interesting ways to use these materials! Enjoy the Olympics!

File Conversion Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:55:00 +0000

I usually work with digital projects and a variety of tools, software and platforms. That means multiple file formats which are not always compatible for use. For example, audio recorded on your mobile phone is not compatible with Powerpoint and many other platforms or programs, nor are some video formats.

I have spent hours finding effective ways of converting files from one format to another so I thought I would pass on this collection of conversion tools to you.

Multiple files conversion

Zamzar

With Zamzar you can convert multiple document, video, music and image formats. You only need to locate the file on your computer or the web (from the URL), select the target format to convert to, enter your e-mail and you’ll receive message with a link to the converted file for download.

Other similar tools

You Convertit

OnlineConvert

PDF and Word conversion

PDF creator

Converting from Word to PDF is very useful to protect the layout of your file apart from making it look more professional. PDF creator is the best tool I have found for this. You have to download it but it is free. Once installed, send your Word file to print and you will see PDF creator in the list of printers. Select it and instead of printing, it will create the PDF version or your Word file.

Another interesting use of PDF creator is creating a selected pages pdf of a bigger pdf file. To do that, send your pdf file to print and select what pages you need. Choose PDF creator from your printers list and it will create a pdf with only the selected pages.

PDF to Word

Sometimes you need to unlock a pdf file, to be able to copy or edit specific parts of the document. That is when PDFtoWord comes in. I have tried it with various results: it has sometimes yielded a perfect Word version, but not always.

Free PDFConverter

Another alternative, which seems to work better, is Free PDF Converter. It works in the same way but I have noticed more consistent results. The only limitation is you cannot convert multiple files in a row. You have to wait 30 minutes between files.

I hope you have found this list useful. It has definitely saved me many hours of work.

Web 2.0 tools and apps I learnt about at IATEFL 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:21:00 +0000

This post is about web 2.0 tools and apps I learnt about at IATEFL 2012. Most of them were totally new to me, a few weren't but are worth including!

Russell Stannard's “The Connected Classroom” was a great session about ways of giving feedback and providing opportunities for speaking practice. Russell mentioned these three tools which are very simple and useful!

MailVu

It allows you to use a webcam/voice to record video and send it by email
Here's Russell’s tutorial

Eyejot

It also allows you to use a webcam/voice to record video and send by email. But you can also download the recording or send it by email with notes and attachments. There are desktop and mobile versions
Here's a YouTube tutorial

MyBrainShark

It allows you to upload powerpoint, video, word, pdf, pictures and then record your voice.
It packs the media and sends a link. It is private by default, but you can make it active for other people to see it. Presentations are embeddable. You can mix video, pictures, ppt, etc into one final file.
Here's Russell’s tutorial full of ideas!

Kyle Mawer's “Game On” on the use of digital games was great. But these two tools he mentioned are for general use for any teacher!

Transferr

It is a visual repository to organize your links. You can choose a private or public option.
You can read about other visual social bookmarking options in this post

Class Dojo

It's a behaviour management app. You can add classes, students, choose positive and negative behaviors to assess, award points. There is a mobile app you can use as remote in the actual classroom.

Mike Harrison's “No words: ideas for using sounds and images in the classroom” was a wonderful session. Two very useful tools he mentioned are:

ELTpics

Free to use images on Creative Commons Licence
How it Works? Read this article

Free sounds effects

At the LT SIG Pre Conference Event Paul Sweeney showcased lots of apps. These are my favourite!

Edmodo

Private groups where you can share assignments and resources, organize polls and class schedules. Very easy to manage and lots of potential!

Evernote

Great tool with desktop, web and mobile apps. It allows you to take notes and add photos and sound recordings to them. You can organize your notes in notebooks and email them later.

Dropbox

Perfect solution to keep the files in your desktop pc, laptop and mobile phone synchronized. It also keeps a copy of all the files in the website so you can access it from any other computer.

Hope you found something new!

Digital Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 23:36:00 +0000

I have just come back from IATEFL Glasgow 2012, where I presented on Digital Storytelling for the Technology and Teens Symposium organised by Graham Stanley.

Digital Storytelling is any combination of images, text, audio and music to create a digital story, either fictional or non-fictional.

The presentation focused on ways of implementing digital storytelling with teens. I described what I believe are its benefits and then showed three examples of projects I did with my students from Instituto San Francisco de Asis in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Some digital storytelling tools you can use:

Powerpoint and Windows Movie Maker allow you to combine images, text, music and audio to create digital stories.

Animoto allows you to upload images and combines them automatically with a selection of background music available on the website. The free version has a 30 seconds limit. For longer videos you need the paid version.

Xtranormal allows you to create text to speech animations.

Voicethread is a slide show creator, in which you can type or record comments around each slide.

Zimmer Twins is an animation creator, where you can choose from 3 characters (a boy, a girl and a cat) but you can then customize their actions, face expressions, verbal utterances, background, objects in their hands and transitions. It is very versatile and it automatically adds sound effects according to your choices. This is one of my favourites!

Pixton is complex comic creator tools where you can choose a template and customize it, or you can start from scratch. The final result looks very professional!

Bookr is a digital book creator which retrieves photos from Flickr (according to your search). You select the pics you want to use on each page and you can write text or captions below the pics.

Bubblr is very similar to Bookr but instead of a book the result is a comic strip. It also retrieves photos from Flickr and you can add text in bubbles.

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=22482

Storybird is a digital storybook creator. You choose the illustrations you can to include in your story from what is available in the website. There is a huge collection of beautiful illustrations by amazing artists. You can search by artist or theme/keyword. You can then add text below the illustrations. The result is absolutely fantastic!

There are many more tools but I wanted to focus on the ones I mentioned in my presentation. I'm sure I'll write a second post about digital storytelling tools!

Here are the slides for my presentation

Implementing Digital Storytelling with Teens

View more PowerPoint from Vicky Saumell

And here's an interview I did for Seth Dickens after the session. Thanks Seth!

You can read the whole article he wrote to accompany the interview here

iPhone, iPod touch and iPad apps for ELT

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:31:00 +0000

I`ve read many articles about useful apps for Apple products so far and there are several apps I use in my iPhone that are rarely featured. So I decided to publish my own list.
I have focused mainly on free apps although there are a few paid ones that are worth it. I have left out dictionaries since there are many options and probably deserve a post of their own.
All the apps reviewed here are available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Category: Reference

Spell Check

Spell Check is an inexpensive Spell Checker and a Dictionary, which requires no internet connection!
• $0.99
• Language: English

Irregular Verbs

Irregular Verb Dictionary for English learners contains over 370 irregular verbs used in modern English. A useful app for learners!
• Free
• Language: English

Sounds

This app lets you hear the English sounds in both American and British English and you can practise and play. There`s a premium version available.
• Free
• Language: English

My WordBook

This app is an interactive vocabulary notebook for language learners. You can browse preloaded flashcards of the most important words in the English language. Each flashcard contains pictures, sounds, example sentences, translations and notes to help you remember.

This version does not contain any translations but you can enter your own translations by editing the words. Regional language versions are available for: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Arabic.
• Free
• Language: English

Free British English Genco Audio Cards

This app has 20 flashcards with sound and you can practice and play games.
• Free
• Language: English

Category: Language Practice

Conversation English

Conversation English is an app for anyone learning English. There are 20 complete Conversation English Lessons that include 200 common English Idioms and Expressions and help you develop your Listening and Speaking Skills.  
• $4.99
• Language: English

Dynamic English Lessons - Phrasal Verbs

This app presents phrasal verbs in different categories. You need to solve the category puzzle first and as you do, the phrasal verbs are added to the dictionary section, where you can read the definition. Although it looks a bit difficult, a newer version is being developed to provide more help with solving the puzzles.
• £0.99
• Language: English

Category: Books
Stanza

This free app allows you to download and read books. It is available in many languages.
• Free
• Languages: English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese

Free books

This paid app (Yes, I know….why is it called free books?) gives you access to 23,469 classic books instantly. There are books available in many languages.
• $1.99
• Languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish

Cinderella – a 3d fairy tale

This app is an interactive retelling of the classic fairy tale. It includes games and music and beautiful illustrations! There is a free version and a paid one.
• Free/ $4.99
• Language: English

Christmas Tale

This is a free interactive Christmas story worth trying.
• Free
• Language: English

Category: Word games

Word challenge

60 Second Word Challenge is a vocabulary game to help improve and widen your English learning developed by the British Council. Really good!
• Free
• Languages: English, German

Word Scramble

Scramble is a fast fun game of finding words in a jumbled grid. Great for vocabulary practice! And addictive!
• Free
• Language: English

Hangman

This classic hangman app let you choose difficulty and word categories, like animals, food, etc. Simple but fun to practise vocabulary.
• Free
• Language: English

Other

Mouth off

Hold your iPhone in front of your mouth and talk, shout, laugh, scream or sing to get the mouth of your choice to animate in time with the sounds you make. There`s a lite version with one free mouth.
• $0.99
• Language: English

Sonic Pics

This app is an easy way to turn your images into custom slideshow movies. The lite version has some restrictions in the number of pictures allowed and maximum recording time of 10 minutes.
•    Free/ $2.99
•    Language: English

Fotobabble

This app lets you quickly create and easily add your voice to photos and instantaneously share those Talking Photos with friends.
• Free
• Language: English

Dice Roller

This app is a simple dice roller simulator. Simple yet useful.
• Free
• Language: English

Hope you have found something useful! If you know of other apps you use, please add them in your comments!

Blog Action Day: Food!

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 04:01:00 +0000

It`s Blog Action Day 2011. You can read about the initiative here.

This my contribution to the topic of FOOD in education. I have put together some interesting interactive resources related to food and nutrition. Click on the images to go to the websites.

Nutrition

This is the USDA website with a few interactive resources to explore nutrition issues.

This is a collection of nutrition related games for children.

A collection of interactive tools related to nutrition by the USDA

Interactive Nutrition Label and Quiz by Health Canada

Sustainability

This is an interesting article about the sustainable table with an option to find out what's fresh and ripe where you live in the US. Great if you live in the US but useful too for other countries to discuss this issue.

A similar tool is this interactive US map that shows seasonal ingredients

These are just a few tools to get you started in the discussion of food related issues. Hope you have found something useful!

Guest post: SpeedUpTV – Helps To Hone Your Foreign Language Learning Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 15:48:00 +0000

SpeedUpTV is a new iOS-based application, compatible with the iPhone. This application provides rich features that have made it a popular choice among various iPhone users. Some iPhone users, like foreign language students, find this application simply amazing. SpeedUpTV is an effective app for improving your listening comprehrension skills. For example, if you have trouble understanding some dialogue in your favorite drama or an important part during a movie you can always replay or slow it down and loop it so you can understand what was said more clearly.

Let me explain in more detail. You can decrease the speed to 0.5X meaning you can slow down the speech of a video. Moreover, you can choose playback speed of 0.5x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x or 2.5x without sacrificing on quality of the video. This can be helpful when watching educational videos or maybe a lecture in English or any other foreign language.

This app helps students clarify their errors and make the necessary changes to improve fluency. I found this app to be of great use for people trying to learn a new language. I was able to slowdown the speed of video to better understand what the speaker was saying. SpeedUpTV is a great tool for improving listening skills. By listening to the video slowly and then progressively faster, I was able to better understand each dialogue and the nuances of pronunciation.

For those of you having trouble understanding the dialogue in your favorite foreign dramas because of the speed of their speech this app might help you improve your listening comprehension skills while also enjoying learning a foreign language.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speeduptv/id386986953?mt=8

AppsAsia is a South Korean-based company passionately dedicated to providing marketing, promotion and advertising services for Korean iPhone application developers.
__________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in this app, I have 4 redeem codes to give away, courtesy of AppsAsia. Just send me an email at saumell.vicky@gmail.com and the first four will get them.

Cheers,

Vicky

Social Bookmarking: an essential 21st century skill for educators

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Since the very beginning of the internet, and even more so these days with the endless number of useful websites and applications that we come across every day as educators, the need to organize our findings has become an essential skill. Fortunately, there are many tools that can help us to achieve this much needed organization of resources, referred to as social bookmarking.

This video about social bookmarking is a great introduction to the topic

The video also introduces the concept of tagging, which is expanded in this one.

A main consideration about tagging is consistency. Tags have to work for you, but good tags also work for the rest. Decide whether you will use a singular or plural noun (animal or animals?), and infinitive or a gerund (tag or tagging?), etc to make it easier to find things.

If you want to read further about social bookmarking and tagging, here are 2 interesting articles

7 things you should know about social bookmarking (Educause)
Folksonomies article

Social Bookmarking applications

Now you are ready to start bookmarking content. There are many social bookmarking applications with slight differences. I have compiled a list for you to see and choose the one you like best.

1) Delicious, which was also mentioned in the social bookmarking video. Delicious is very simple to use and has many users so you can benefit from what they are bookmarking too.

2) Diigo is a fantastic application for social bookmarking. It allows tagging, but also highlighting parts of the website and adding comments with sticky notes. Definitely my favourite!

Taking Diigo beyond the bookmark is an interesting article about the potential of Diigo.

3) Simply Box is a visual way of collecting bookmarks by adding them to a box, where you can see the screenshots of the bookmarked website.

4) LiveBinders works in a similar way by adding websites to a particular binder, with multiple tabs within.

Other tools to explore

Blinklist

Notefish

Bag the Web

Tizmos

Skloog and Symbaloo allow you to create shortcuts to your favourite websites and use as a startpage. I can see a great potential here for sharing useful resources with students visually in one page.

Symbaloo

Skloog

Hope you have found something useful! If you know of other tools or have any other ideas, please share in the comments.

How to Start Blogging with Students

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 13:31:00 +0000

Do you want to start blogging with your students but don`t quite know where to start?

When I first read about blogs and teachers blogging with students, I tried to set up a plan so that I could introduce blogs gradually both for students and teachers. So I have decided to share my ideas in this blog post as I know many teachers feel overwhelmed by the concept of blogging.

My usual recommendation is that, as a teacher, you cannot introduce any technology tool in class unless you are familiar with it. So with that in mind, it is important that you familiarize yourself with blogs first as a user before you introduce them in class.

Step 1: Commenting on a blog (teachers)

Find a few blogs you really like and make it a habit of commenting.

Step 2: Making your own blog

Set up a blog to experiment with. The main purpose of the blog could be sharing professional experiences among the teachers, but it can also be a space for more personal musings or a digital journal.

The blog you are now reading was conceived with this idea in mind.

Step 3: Building a repository of materials using a blog

Create a collection of resources for your students by posting them to a blog.

Examples:

a collection of videos to be used and reused with different classes
a set of pictures to be used as discussion prompts

Step 4: Making a blog-based lesson

Choose a lesson that would benefit from the use of technology and use a blog to present it to students. Have a look at two blog-based lessons I prepared a while ago on Friendship and ConspiracyTheories.

So far, students have only accessed the blogs to see the materials, they have not been asked to comment or blog themselves.

Step 5: Commenting on a blog (students)

Find and interesting blog from a colleague or class and ask students to read it and comment. Alternatively you can use a blog of your own, for example the ones in steps 2 and 3, and ask students to leave comments.

Now, they have moved from passive recipients of content to a bit more interactive users.

Step 6: Building a class blog

Build a blog for a particular class or project and have students writing and posting to this one blog. In this case, you need to give them editing permission but they do not have to make their own blog.

This step stretches students’ responsibility a bit more as they become authors in the class blog.

Have a look at this example of a blog I made for students to write film reviews.

Step 7: Building individual personal blogs

The last step is having students make their own blogs and manage them. You can guide the students’ postings or you can give them freedom to use the blog as an expressive platform for anything they want to write about. In this last step, you can benefit from using RSS to monitor your students’ blogs.

This is a quick guide to RSS, which I will be addressing in more detail soon…

Also, these are detailed step by step videos for using Blogger by Russell Stannard in his amazing Teacher Training Videos website.

Hope you have found some useful ideas to get you started!

If you have other ideas you are most welcome to share them in the comments.

Pronunciation related tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Technology has been very useful in finding ways to help learners with pronunciations issues, which were in the past addressed by the teacher. I have collected some interesting pronunciation tools that can definitely help students when teachers are not around.

For pronunciation of individual sounds

Printable phonemic charts

English Club phonemic chart

English File Sounds Poster

Interactive phonemic charts

Teaching English/ British Council

Phonetics Focus/ Cambridge English Online

One Stop English/ Macmillan

Sounds App for iPhone, iPad and Android OS devices

The Sounds of American English/ University of Iowa

Interactive exercises and games

Phonetics Focus/ Cambridge English Online

Phonetics Focus Mobile App

English Online France

Free English Lessons Online Alphabet

One Stop English Pronunciation Skills

For listening to pronunciation of words and connected speech

Forvo/ All the Words in the World. Pronounced

Howjsay / A free online Talking Dictionary of English Pronunciation

For practising pronunciation of words and connected speech

English Central

I encourage you to browse through these tools and see how you an use them either in or out of the classroom!

Guest post: Correcting the Translator

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:15:00 +0000

Today`s guest writer is Lindsey Wright. She has written a post on an issue I have always paid attention to, but never got round to writing about: the use of online translators as allies to learning.

Lindsey Wright is fascinated with the potential of emerging educational technologies, particularly the online school, to transform the landscape of learning. She writes about web-based learning, electronic and mobile learning, and the possible future of education.

In today's modern world, online translation technology enables us to quickly and conveniently understand online content written in foreign languages. Services like Google translate will even offer to translate entire websites. As impressive as this is, native English speakers who have used these services will still find grammatical errors and dissonant wording. While it is certain that computers have not yet perfected the subtle art of language translation, human students of the English language could benefit from the valuable practice of correcting online translators' mistakes. With a little ingenuity, online translation services can become useful tools for students and teachers of the English language, no matter whether they are in a traditional classroom or in an online school. The following activities, grouped by difficulty level, are just a few examples of potential translator exercises.

Beginner Level

For English learners only just starting to familiarize themselves with grammar and syntax, translators can be excellent for reinforcing lessons in simple rules and constructions, such as subject-verb agreement, prepositions, verb-preposition combinations, or any other fundamentals of the English language.

Beginner Activity

1) Teach a lesson on a simple rule of English grammar and/or syntax.

2) Give several single-sentence examples as references for your students.

3) Have the students type, in their own language, single-sentence examples similar to the those given in the lesson. For example, in a group of students learning about prepositions, a Thai student may type "เด็กอยู่ข้างหน้า," producing the online translation, "Children in front" while a Spanish speaking student may type, "El pajaro esta volando por encima de la casa," which could be translated as “The bird is flying over the house."

4) Have the students check and correct the translation against the examples, and go over them in class.

Further examples:

Basic Lesson: Verb Preposition "Jump over"

Type into the translator: "El gato salto sobre el zapato."

View result: "The cat jumped on the shoe."

Correction: "The cat jumped over the shoe."

Basic Lesson: "Verb + Subject"

Type a single sentence into the translator: "ไก่ของคุณอยู่บนโต้ะ"

View the result: "Your chicken on the table."

Correction: "Your chicken is on the table."

Activity objectives for beginner learners:

1) To gain experience in using the words and/or constructions taught.

2) To make connections between English and their native language.

3) To note the differences in the use of words and constructions between English and their native language.

4) To ultimately reinforce lessons taught in class by checking for and correcting translation errors, as well as confirming correct sentence structures when there are no errors.

Intermediate Level

Intermediate students who have already begun to understand grammar and syntax can comprehend larger sections of text, but might still struggle with application. As such, simple short stories are helpful tools when teaching and reviewing vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. The Internet offers a large selection from sources such as Grimmstories, which has bilingual versions. An alternative is to use well-known stories from another language.

Intermediate Activity.

1) Select a story and prepare the students by reviewing new vocabulary they will encounter.

E.g., select the story "The Magic Tree."

2) Select the link to the version of the story that is written in the native tongue of your students. E.g., if your class' native language is Spanish, select the link for the Spanish version of the story.

3) Translate the story or webpage with an online translator. E.g., translate the Spanish version of "The Magic Tree" into English with an online translator and present it to the students to correct.

4) Allow the students a brief period to correct any errors they detect on their own.

5) As a class, go over the translated story, sentence by sentence, asking the students what corrections should be made. E.g., Incorrect: "...through a meadow in the center found a tree,"

Corrected: "In the middle of the park there was tree..."

Incorrect: "The child may carry all his friends to the tree."

Corrected: "The little boy brought all his friends to the magic tree."

6) Read a correct version of the story to the students in English.

7) Finally, give the students the correct version to compare with the corrections they have made.

Activity objectives for intermediate learners:

1) To learn and review vocabulary in story form.

2) To review and apply rules of grammar and syntax.

4) To give students experience in selecting words with similar definitions for a specific context.

3) To practice listening comprehension.

Advanced Level

Advanced English learners already have a solid understanding of syntax and grammar rules. However, to ensure they possess the ability to apply this knowledge, it is good to have students edit works that have already been translated. This allows them to learn the subtleties of English and tests how much of the language they actually comprehend.

1) Translate a document written in a foreign language. Good sources are news articles, longer stories, letters, or even documents the students themselves have written in another language.

2) Have the students edit the translation mistakes themselves.

3) If possible, have students proofread each other's editing.

4) Have students type up or present the final corrected versions of the document.

Example: Translating the News.

Translate a news story, such as "EU Incorporó a Venezuela en Lista Negra por Tráfico de Personas." selected from the Spanish news site, Univision Noticias.

Translate: "Venezuela joined in EU blacklist for trafficking."

Edit: "Venezuela was added to the EU blacklist for human trafficking."

Activity objectives for advanced learners:

1) As there is no single correct English version, students' language ability will be challenged.

2) Students will develop reading comprehension.

3) Students and instructors can explore subtleties and nuanced rules of the English language together.

These are only a few ideas on how online translators can be used as practice for English learners. If used with foresight and creativity, translators can become very valuable tools in creating lesson plans for any English level. Likewise, an added bonus of the use of translators in the classroom via these activities is that students will definitely realize that online translation is neither a substitute for doing homework nor composing English documents from scratch. So instead of trying to cut and paste into a translator for class, students can instead learn their stuff from correcting those same translators, gaining confidence and experience at the same time.

Note: The examples mentioned in this article are in Spanish and Thai, but the activities can be applied to all languages. Also, the activities assume a group setting, although students who are studying alone could still utilize them to improve their English.

Plagiarism-related tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:12:00 +0000

As a teacher, you hope you will never need to use these tools, but once in a while a student turns in a writing assignment, which you suspect is not his own.

This happened to me last week when I asked my students to write film reviews to be published in our dedicated blog. We had previously worked on film-related vocabulary and read a few examples of film reviews so that they understood the format, style and register. We worked out which information was to be included and then we started working on the review: a first draft written in class, draft back the next class with errors highlighted according to an error correction code and a second class to edit their drafts into a final version.

The overall result was amazing (You can check their reviews here). However, one student turned in a suspicious review of the film “The Little Fockers”. When I read “As Greg and his wife Pam prepare for their young twins' upcoming birthday, Jack is nursing a heart condition that's got him mulling who should become the family's patriarch should he die. For reasons that I won't bother to spoil, Jack selects Greg who, of course, must endure a new set of tests and expectations. Greg, though, stands to ruin it all when he begins working with an exuberant and unbelievably hot drug company sales rep….”, I knew he hadn`t written it so I tried to find out where he had copied it from and, unfortunately, I was right….

So, after having done a bit of research on plagiarism checking tools, here is a list of the options I found and checked with the following text:

As Greg and his wife Pam prepare for their young twins' upcoming birthday, Jack is nursing a heart condition that's got him mulling who should become the family's patriarch should he die.

The following tools returned results showing that the text had been plagiarized.

Google

http://www.google.com/

The Plagiarism checker

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/

Dupli Checker
http://www.duplichecker.com/

The following tools returned results saying that the work was original, no plagiarism.

Article checker
http://www.articlechecker.com/

Advanced plagiarism checker
http://searchenginereports.net/articlecheck.aspx

Plagiarisma

http://plagiarisma.net/

Plagiarism checker
http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/

Other tools

For this one, you need to sign up

Academic Plagiarism

http://www.academicplagiarism.com/

Free PC downloads

Viper

http://www.scanmyessay.com/plagiarism-detector.php

Sherlock

http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~scilect/sherlock/

Tools to search for copies of your page on the web.

Copyscape

http://www.copyscape.com/

Check website plagiarism
http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/url/

I hope this brief report can help you choose the best tool for your context.

The Horizon Report 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 20:20:00 +0000

The 2011 edition of the Horizon Report, a joint publication by Educause and The New Media Consortium, has just become available.

It examines emerging technologies in relation to their potetial impact on teching and learning and categorizesthem according to the predicted time of adoption.

The following summary taken directly from the report is a good overview of you can expect to find.
"The internationally recognized series of Horizon Reports is part of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, a comprehensive research venture established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact over the coming five years on a variety of sectors around the globe. This volume, the 2011 Horizon Report, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. It is the eighth in the annual series of reports focused on emerging technology in the higher education environment."

The 2011 Horizon report includes such technologies as Electronic Books, Mobiles, Game-Based Learning and others.

Click on the image to get the PDF version of the report

Teaching English through songs in the digital age (part 4 of 4): Music-related web 2.0 tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:29:00 +0000

Finally, this is the last part of the series which summarizes the #ELTchat from Jan 12th about Teaching English through songs: activities, resources and benefits of using songs for teaching. In this post I have collected music-related web 2.0 tools which were mentioned during the #ELTchat and examples of how to use them.

You Tube

Music and lyrics copied and pasted on IWB.
Put up a playlist on YouTube for students. So, if they like a song, then they can listen to more beyond class.
There are lots of karaoke videos on Youtube; with just a computer and a mic, you can have a great singing lesson!

Spotify (Spotify is available in the following countries:Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and Grooveshark

Get students to make a playlist, then ask them to walk around class & find out who else’s they would listen to.

ESL video

Make a quiz on lyrics. Ss answer as they watch the video clip.

Lyrics training

Great for autonomous work on the songs they like.
Choose song, choose level, fill gaps. Music will stop.

Overstream

Ask students to subtitle song. Then compare each other’s versions

Wordle and Worditout

Do a word cloud to predict the song theme.
Students make up their own song based on word cloud , then compare with real song to see who is accurate.
A great warmer for a song is to stick the lyrics in Wordle or Worditout and ask learners to guess song from word cloud.

Other tools and websites

Tune into English is a fabulous free resource to use with students!!

English Central always includes a song for pronunciation work.

Karaoke Party is a great interactive online karaoke venue – very useful interface with ratings et al.

Tubeoke is also great. It shows the video and the lyrics alongside.

I hope these tools can really make the use of songs more fun. I have really enjoyed writing this series!

Teaching English through songs in the digital age (part 3 of 4): Specific songs and their uses

noreply@blogger.com (Vicky Saumell) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:28:00 +0000

It´s now time for part 3 of the series which summarizes the #ELTchat from Jan 12th about Teaching English through songs: activities, resources and benefits of using songs for teaching.

Specific songs and their uses

Shakira´s “Fool” to look at words that share the same sounds.
“Anything you can do I can do better” for the comparative.
Katy Perry’s “Firework” to tackle a taboo subject.
A modals (for prediction) song is “The ballad of Billy Jo” – there’s a version by Sinead O’Connor.
“Eternal Flame” by the Bangles with Elementary level -great present continuous, miming actions and body vocabulary practice.
For beginners get them to write new verse for “Don’t know much” song – good fun.
“Hello Goodbye” by The Beatles with beginners. I often ask them to write an extra verse.
A lesson where I used a song video to help teach vocabulary & grammar (likes and dislikes).
A blog post on using “Pencil full of lead” (the vid is superb for an EFL class).
Activities to work on pronunciation, as this one with “Bizarre Love Triangle”.
To practise present perfect continuous this song by Foreigner is great. Do A/B close gap activity.
Karaoke Lady Gaga’s "Bad romance" .
"Mad World" with multiple visuals: video 1, video 2 and video 3 .
Bob Dylan and Billy Bragg are great for stimulating discussions about issues.
“Taxman” by The Beatles to teach the comparative.
Great lesson on articles with “Penny Lane”.
“She’s leaving Home” for hard to find narratives.
Great new lesson plan on Lessonstream.org based on a “How deep is the ocean”.
"In the ghetto" would be an Elvis number I would pick.
Funny songs like “If I had a million dollars” by Barenaked Ladies are great for conditionals type 2.
A great 2nd conditional song is “When I win the lottery” by Camper Van Beethoven.
Black Eyes Peas´ “Where is the Love” is a song teens love…but tough to sing. I challenge them to sing it from beginning to end for credits.
“Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds” is good for teaching prepositions.
Pub song “Show me the way to go home” to introduce Language Varieties.
Chumbawumba’s “Add me” is great for teens. You can have a seriously good discussion about internet safety afterwards.
Ask students to compare this video of “American Pie” (broken link) with either the movie or this other video.
“Take a bow” by Rihanna is good for showbiz vocabulary.
“Cosmic” by Jamiroquai is good for space vocabulary.
"Spanish Train" or "Patricia the Stripper" by Chris de Burgh are good story songs.
This video of “Someday” by Nickelback is also great for starting a discussion as the end of it is quite surprising.
Album ‘The Boy Bands Have Won’ some great story songs. Also Folk songs.
Australian singer/songwriter Paul Kelly has lots of great story-songs, but may be ‘too Australian’ for anywhere else.
For "Young Hearts" give lyrics, ask them to devise video clip THEN play it – music big contrast to words.
Paul Kelly – very Oz.
Daniel Powter for story songs, his videos anyway "Free Loop" and "Bad Day".
Re: story songs Sterephonics – ‘I stopped to fill my car up’ .
Re: story songs: “The Cruel War” by Peter Paul & Mary, “Spanish is the Loving Tongue” by Michael Martin Murphey.
There might be a (long) lesson in Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts”.
Alanis Morisette´s “Hand in my pocket” and “You Learn” are great for opposites and actions, respectively.
To punctuate “In The Ghetto” and “Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down”.
“Conjunction Junction” not designed for foreign learners but still works.
Michael Bublé video “Just haven’t met you yet” as a writing prompt for retelling.
Alanis Morisette´s “Ironic” – a great video to accompany this song for advanced learners is – Ed Byrne (comedian).
I use this version of “In the ghetto” to demo importance of working on your pronunciation.
David Deubelbeiss´ #1 activity .
“Lemon tree” animation video. Check these amazing ideas by @evab2001!
“Jealous Guy” – John Lennon for Past Continuous and relationships.
“United Breaks Guitars” is another great storytelling song as well.
‘Ode to Billy Jo’ video – comments full of great discussion material.

Again it´s amazing to see how much information was shared in one hour over the #ELTchat! The last part of the series is coming soon...

Note: There´s a broken link in #26. Will try to fix it ASAP