week 6

Hello every one,

Today on my blog I'll review some interesting digital tools, all focusing on improving your students speaking skills - taken from M.r Ross's call technology in education course.

1.  So the first tool is 'Voice Chat' - 

'Voice Chat' today is a very basic type of digital tool which is used daily by many of us (I was careful not to say all..), WhatsApp is a good example for this, though definitely not the only one.

Skype, Google hangouts, Messenger and more tools can also cater a voice chatting platform..

This type of tool can be used in class to enhance students' talking, or writing (chatting with text) in an interesting and interactive way.

One simple example is connecting with students from a different country and developing a chat with them.

2. The second tool is called 'voice thread' - a 'group audio blog' which you as a teacher can upload a picture to, and the students can write, record or video themselves commenting about it, enhancing writing or speaking.  

There are probably many more ways of using this free tool, try it out here: https://voicethread.com/myvoice/  - only required to register before.

3. The next two tools also deal with improving the students' speaking skills:

Chatterpix - an app you can download for free, giving you an option to animate any picture with your own recordings. students can take the picture and literally 'put words in its mouth', their words of course.. 

Just note that it will probably suit younger students better, and they must have an i pad/phone. 

you can download it here -  https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chatterpix-kids/id734046126

                 

 The fourth, and pretty cool I would say tool is 'Adobe Spark Video' which allows you to create a kind of slide - video. You can input pictures and text and record sound tracks. you can also just put a video in as well. 

It could be for great use while doing projects or demonstrations by students or teachers alike..

find it here: https://spark.adobe.com/    

Fifth and last tool for today is 'Flipgrid' or actually a new feature in 'Flipgrid' - which is the whiteboard function. With this function you can basically create a (maximum 3 minute) video with yourself together with a  whiteboard background you can draw and write on while still recording.

This feature can be useful for a flipped class room, where a teacher can teach a 3 minute rule or any other material before the lesson, send it to the students to watch beforehand, leaving the lesson itself mostly for practice.

link over here: https://info.flipgrid.com/

As you noticed I gave you only examples for the tools above, sure though that you can find and expand there usage to many different ways.

  

call week 4 - yay

Hello dear people from all kinds and ages! 

I would like to apologize for the delay of last week's post, I will try to confiscate you with some interesting and practical stuff, taken from Mr. Ross's 'call - technology in education course'. 

Using pictures in education -
A picture can really be helpful for learning in general, and particularly for learning language.
A simple example is teaching vocabulary where a picture can help increase neurological connections in the brain and boost memory results (as based by Gardner's 8 kinds of intelligence - spacial intelligence in this case). You would like to teach the different names of animals? flash cards with animal pictures would of course be great for that.
Another interesting idea for using pictures in a classroom, is showing a picture of something (place, person, situation etc.) on the board and making students talk about it in pairs, groups and so forth.
Just to note that there are many more ways of using visual experience in the classroom..

Here are some links for you (and thank actually Mr Ross for providing them):

sets of pictures -
http://ddeubel.edublogs.org/2011/03/22/picture-sets/

good for EFL pictures -

http://www.scribd.com/collections/2311934/Picture-Sets

The known 'quizlet' has an option of uploading pictures as well, making it easy to create flashcards.

I personally was very impressed by http://pixabay.com/  -  though not necessarily for learning English.. it's just a great sight with many many beautiful pictures.



 

 
       
Here is an idea for a lesson based on what is called 'linguistic landscape':

linguistic landscape means all the the different written signs outside of our homes, from commercial signs to street signs, names of schools shops and so forth.
This landscape can be used to learn some English, given the fact that most countries (including Israel of course) have English pretty dominant in their linguistic landscape.
Ask your students to take pictures of their linguistic landscape (making them more aware of the amount of English around them). and later focus on them in class. you can ask them all or part of these questions (taken from Scott Thornbury's blog):

1. Where was this photo taken?
2. How many languages can you see?
3. What is the relative status of the languages? How can you tell?
4. Who wrote the text? For whom?
5. Why is (some of it) in English?
6. Is there a translation? Why/why not?
7. Is it correct?
8. Is there anything you don’t understand?
9. Is there anything you would like to remember?

     

            good luck!

Hi everyone!

Warm regards to all my countless followers..

Well today I would like to talk about two more little but sweet tools I came across today--- 'word of the day' and 'word clouds'. 

Starting with 'word clouds', it is definitely one of those cute tools you can use sometimes..

it basically shows you the word frequency in any written text, and emphasizes the more frequent words with different font and color options (you can play with these features to your own taste)   

it's useful for finding key words in a text, and the opposite - special words that we might want to recognize.

It can also be good for self assessment, maybe you were using to much the same words in your text. link to that - https://worditout.com/

and to the second tool....

'Word of the day'.. is my pick of the day!.. it is a small tool (gives you one word to learn each day) but on the long run- can probably really enhance your vocabulary (I'm just thinking if I would know another 365 words a year, in the past 3 years it would be already 1195 new English words In my pocket.. not bad.. just another few to go then..:))   

two important recommendations though:

 A. pick a 'word of the day' that suits your level, so you won't find yourself learning words that native English speakers do not know.. the best option I saw that applies to that is  'word think' under  http://www.wordthink.com/ 

B. I would also probably recommend to go over (even quickly) the words, every week or so, and than every month and so you will actually remember the words.  

blessings       

        

So hi again, and welcome to my blog..

Today we're going to talk about some of the blogs that I'm hopefully going to follow in the next couple of months, all dealing with how using technology in education.. ready?

Well at first a short intdroduction to these 3 blogs -  

1. Alice Keeler's 'Teacher Tech' which helps make sense from the unending updates google comes out with all the time, and make them relevant to our classroom.

2. EdTecTeacher -  A group of 16 instructors that give you tools and advise that can be applied immediately in your class.

3. The Cool Cat Teacher by Vicki Davis which spotlights cool tools and apps for teachers together with updated news from the edtech field. 

And to some interesting ideas...

So starting with something I assume can be pretty basic regarding ed-tech (even though I admit I wasn't familiar with it, not so surprising though..) - snagit screen capture - an ed-tech must in Alice's opinion. you can use snagit to make screen shots and edit them, record videos and take of loading and 'putzing around' time to make it short and sweet, create really easy GIFs, and drag all of these features just like that to your google docs or to the place you want to put them in.
Well the only con..  is that it costs a (one time!) fee of 27$, I really thought (and still am) thinking of purchasing this tool, and seriously when I'll be teaching it will probably be worth every penny, for this is a basic tool to create an ed - tech classroom.

      

Something else I would like to share with you is a number of cute ideas David Sladkey shared on Vicki Davis's cool cat blog, trying to help you improve your classroom, so there:

1. Whoever of you who started teaching already are for sure familiar with the sometimes irritating question - 'can I go to the bathroom?'.. so here's an interesting solution - place a small white board in the back of your class in which the students will write their name before going to the bathroom and erasing it when they come back, only one at a time.. this will remove all questions regarding toilet issues thanks to the self regulated board. Didn't try yet but definitely is worth a try. It works for David.

2. David is a math teacher and therefor has a few tips regarding math, but not only.. on e is to change your teacher vocabulary to be more positive, using 'adjust' for example instead of 'fix' and 'mistake'. Sounds a little to politically correct for me, but you know what.. there is something to it..
3. David goes on and gives some nice break activities that your welcome to hear straight from the blog, it's just a lot easier than typing it all.. coolcatteacher
Thanks for being here, and hope you will find something helpful here, or at least enjoyed reading this stuff.