Welcome to my blog! I'm an ESOL teacher and teacher trainer in the UK, and you'll find some of the websites I know about in this blog, and some suggestions on how to use them. Hope it's helpful.
This site is a really nice idea if you want to start your learners blogging but a blog is a bit intimidating! With this tool you can really easily create a page with pictures, text, music, videos etc. It's quick and easy,lots of fun and free!
Here's my example - I had to put it in as a pic, but there is music, too, if you follow this link you can get the full experience!!
You just go to the site, register (it's very quick) and you're ready to go! Nice to find other Glogs that you like, too... Tweet
Another great site from Nick Peachy's blog. It's free, it's quick to set up, you don't have to register and it's very interactive! It's the internet equivalent of a big notice board that anyone can add content to. This could be text, pics, video, links to websites, etc.
There are all sorts of possibilities with a class - you could have a discussion topic in class and ask them to post their views so that they can all be viewed or you could get individuals to make a wall each over a period of time (maybe a month). This could be on a particular theme, or could be an accumulation of ideas, language, texts that they like etc over that time. In this way, it acts just like a blog, but perhaps because it's so easy and intuitive to use, it might be seen as more of a do-able task to less 'techie' learners.
The only downside I can see is that it's potentially very public (but so is a blog...). You can set it so that only the designer of the wall has access to it, or so that other peole can see it but not add to it, and you also have the option of 'vetting' all posts before they go on the wall, so hopefully this will be enough to ensure that you don't get anything nasty on there!
Here's my 'wall' - feel free to stick a comment on it!
This lovely site that I found through Nik Peachy's 'Learning Technology Blog' is full of contributions of a photograph and a short essay to accompany it. These are between 300 and 1000 words and are as diverse as you could imagine. Here's one example:
They are a window into so many different lives and they are touching, funny, interesting and very personal. They could be used for readings in class - as short, self contained authentic readings, written in generally quite straightforward language, they are great - but you can also get learners to read some outside of class, choose a favourite (they're quite addictive - once you start, you keep reading them!) and present theirs to the class, or to explain it a partner. You could also print a few out and get them to match the pictures with the text.
You can't upload your own directly, they have to be submitted for consideration by the editor, and then they may be published on the site, but you could get learners to write their own 'Picture's worth' and display them in the classroom, put them on a blog or submit them to the site to see if they were accepted (or all of the above!).
Limitations? There's no embed code, so you can't include one from the site on your own blog, which is a shame, but that's a small point. They only other problem is that some of the stories might make you cry.....
This is such a fantastic site - it is amazing what is available out there! If you want to give your students motivation to write something, this is your site! It makes it possible to produce really lovely looking, professional e-picture books that you can then tweet, facebook or embed, using professional illustrations from a really wide range of artists. How can this be free? I don't know, but it is!
You can also go onto the site to read books that other people have written. The nice thing about this is that they are short, and illustrated with beautiful pictures, so you can use them even at low levels. Some are aimed at children, but others are definitely written for a more mature audience. Here's an example:
Fight off the doubts!bylaurigonStorybirdYou could just send one of these a week to your learners to give them some extensive reading practice, or you could use one in class on a IWB for language work based on the content or (most obviously) narrative tenses. They're really inspiring! The only limitaton I can imagine is that they will appeal to younger learners and to a lot of adults, but teenagers may feel they're a bit patronising. You could get them to write books (maybe even bi-lingual ones) for younger kids in the school or siblings, perhaps? Tweet
This is a really nice site for creating videos of pictures or video content that you can upload from your own computer or from the internet (or from samples on the site). You get to choose a soundtrack for it and different backgrounds and the result looks something like this:
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com. When you've made your video, you can save it, facebook, tweet or embed it, and it's very easy to use. You do have to register to use it, and the free version only allows you to make 30 second long videos - if you want to make longer ones, you have to sign up and pay. Still, 30 seconds is still enough to make something worthwhile for a language class.
There are lots of potential applications for this. The video I made depicts a trip to Egypt; you could ask your learners to watch the first time to see where I went, and then a second time, ticking off vocabulary on a list of things they saw (eg sail, pyramid, camel, seagull - including some likely things that weren't there -hotel, shops, bus). Then ask them to describe the trip as if they went, or to prepare a tour operator's persuasive sales pitch for the trip. The possibilities for this to be a catalyst for lots of language work are limited only by your imagination. You could also include pictures of your learners or of places that are familiar to them.
My only criticism of the site is that, although it's free, they do keep asking you if you want to upgrade and this can be a lttle annoying......
This is Russell Stannard's favourite, and it really is a fantastic tool. Like some of the other great ideas on the net, it's very simple, but has loads of useful applications. It's a screen capture tool, so you can use it to very easily take pictures and make videos of what is on your computer screen. Whilst you are showing the screen, you can also tape your voice explaining what's going on, or (if you have the Pro version) also use a webcam to make a video of yourself. The basic version is free, or you can download the Pro version very cheaply ($15 a year - about £10), and this gives you a few more options. When you have made a video, you can save it on your computer, or upload it to the server and have a url or an embed code to retrieve it by. There's a little yellow sun that sits on the top of your screen, so it's always there, easily accessible and it's a very simple application to learn to use.
There are loads of ways to use this tool. For me, it's an excellent way to get a 'connected classroom' going. You can really easily and quickly make videos that you can e-mail to your learners and motivate them to continue to study throughout the week. Some ideas -mainly from Russell - thanks :)
- Send them a short video of yourself talking, explaining what the homework is this week
- Put their homework on your screen and then talk them through the mistakes rather than using a correction code
- Put the vocabulary from the lesson on a word document, and show it, talking them through the meanings.
- Rather then just sending the url for a website that's useful, send a captured picture of it, with notes attached.
- Get learners to download the free version and ask them to make their own videos - you could ask them to find an image they like on the internet (perhaps one from the Google Art Project) and describe it. These videos can be embedded on their blogs or they can share the urls with you and with each other
- I think that with more and more distance and blended learning teacher training, this kind of feedback will really help to bridge the distance between tutor and trainee and reduce the feeling of isolation often experienced.
I recently sent out my first Jing feedback on some homework that a learner had sent to me, and she was really surprised and pleased. She wrote back:
Hey..
Wow this is kool
I didnt expect you talking to me
I did this in my email program, really quick I am sorry... I promise the next it´ll be better
cheers
Hopefully it'll be motivating!
I really like the idea of using this tool for giving feedback to learners. This is a link to an excellent article about this, and here's an example of a video I made on Jing showing how you can give feedback on written work.
Not many limitations with this - it takes a little while to upload a video after you've made it, and the maximum time you have is 5 minutes, but you can always make a series of more than one video if thats' a limitation. All in all, a real winner! Tweet
This is a link to a blog called Language Garden, by David Warr, which has a whole collection of 'word plants' in it. They're hard to explain, so the easiest thing is to show you a one! Have a look at this one - how could it fail to brighten up your class?
There are lots of others, some very thought provoking, using lots of different kinds of texts. This one is one that stirs me.....
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Niemöller,
a German anti-Nazi theologian
I think that they are a really nice way to introduce a text for further work on vocabulary or structure, or for further productive work on the same topic. What's particularly nice for lower level adult or teenage learners is that a lot of the texts are quite profound or thought provoking, but quite accessible due to the repetitious nature of the texts. The visual aspect may also help to add motivation, and comprehension.
Limitations? I guess you might have to be a bit sensitive to your learners in terms of some of the content (the one above, for example, might be upsetting to some), but apart from that I think they're great for a five minute filler, or for basing a whole lesson around. Let the garden grow!
Hot Potatoes is a quiz maker. You can download it for free from here, and it has a range of different types of quiz, ranging from a crossword, to multiple choice questions, matching activities and clozes. It's nice in that you can produce quizzes that are applicable to your learners and include colour, pictures, and useful feedback with the answers.
This picture shows you the screen you get for making a JQuiz:
It's a great tool if you have something specific that you want to test your learners on, and they can be saved to use with further classes or to share with colleagues or on the net. It's worth considering, though, that they take a lot of time to make and a very short time for the learners to consume. Also, although you can include feedback with the answers, on the whole, they are a testing, rather than a learning tool. They do take a lot of time to develop and there is already a huge amount of quiz type material on the net, so if you want to test your learners on standard grammatical items, it's probably best to do a quick Google search. If you want to develop more specific quizzes, though - this is your tool.
I'm not sure that this is really very valuable for language learning, but it's a bit of fun and very easy to do! You can go to the site and upload a few pictures to make a slideshow, as you can with other sites, but you can also put different effects on them
With these pictures, for example, I asked my learners to guess who the people were and to describe them. I then went on to a lesson about families. I think that the puzzle aspect makes it that bit more engaging, and you can press the 'View All Images' button to see the images without them changing every second! It's quite limited in scope but it's a nice little gadget to warm up a lesson! Tweet
Here's another lovely site if you want some visual stimulation for descriptive work. With this website, you can go on a virtual tour of lots of the most famous art galleries in the world - MoMA in New York, the National Gallery and the Tate in London, The Hermitage in St Petersburg - if you're into art, it's really fab, and even if you think your students are not so interested in high culture, how much nicer to describe beautiful pictures than mediocre ones.
The gallery tour looks like this and you can navigate your way around using your mouse.
You can also zoom in and have a better look at individual pictures, like this:
There are lots of ways you could use these pictures. You could use this picture, with low levels for example to practise prepositions (the bed is next to the wall, there are pictures on the wall, etc) and articles (there is a table under the window, on the table is a glass). At higher levels ask them for homework to choose a museum, choose a picture and write a description of it, or just a paragraph on why they like it.
Limitations? I guess it won't appeal to everyone, as quite a lot of people may feel that this is a bit 'high' culture - for teenagers, it may not be very 'cool' - and, to be honest, navigating your way around isn't all that easy (you can end up staring at the wall, or the ceiling or going through the wall into the street!), but it works well if you choose a museum and them go through the pictures that they have selected.
This site is really interesting, especially if you have students who are quite politically aware (or you feel you'd like to make them more politically aware!). It has a wide range of world maps that are distorted according to various criteria. You can choose what you'd like to see -anything from numbers of people in tertiary education to internet use, and a whole raft of other things. Below is an example of one showing GDP, showing how the purchasing power of various currencies varies form country to country and therefore the discrepancies in power between nations. It's a bit of an eye-opener....
I think that this would work very well with educated teenagers or adults who are interested in world events. A simple print out would make a great warmer for a discussion on the topic and could be used for work on comparatives and superlatives, too. If you were teaching articles with geographical place names, it might make an interesting alternative to the 'take a trip round the world' activity, too.
I suppose that the only limitations are that the class would need to be fairly well educated and have a good sense of the actual geography of a world map (this wouldn't work so well with my ESOL class of middle aged South Asian women, I don't think) and that they need to have a background of expressing the kind of critical thought that this discussion would entail.
This is an example of a picture from Mapcrunch. It's a site that uses images from Google Street View from all over the world. You can also follow the roads along and see different views, and there are pictures from all over the world to choose from:
Some of them are really stunning., but it's worth noting that,since they are all street views, a lot are of suburban streets or motorways and so a bit universal in character. A nice activity might be to show some of these less iconic ones and see if the learners can guess where they are. It could be nice for teaching comparatives and superlatives or doing speaking exercises to descibe scenes. Here are a couple of examples - Which countries do you think they are from?
Give up? Well, it's New Zealand, and Switzerland - arguably two of the prettiest countries in the world!
Gif Up is a really great website for creating slideshows for use in the class. You can use pictures of your own, or from Flickr (which has thousands of images of all sorts of things) or from websites. to use it, just go to the website, click on 'Select from Flickr', and put in a word to search for (I used 'africa')
Then select up to 9 images and the site will make a slideshow for you. It's designed to make animations, so put the speed on 'super slow' if you want it to be more of a slideshow.
This is a nice tool for use as an introduction to a topic or a reading, for example. You could show them the slideshow and ask them in pairs to think of as many words as possible to describe them. You could then elicit more vocabulary and add to theirs. My class also wrote poetry from this:
Africa
Elephants roaming the savannah
Boabab trees sheltering herdsmen
Buffalo stampeding
Children playing in the rain
Africa.
