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!