20 Questions

July 11th, 2010

Not the game – Just questions I ask (asked) myself

I knew everything when I first started teaching. Mwaaahahahaha.

I’ll say that again…  Mwaaahahahaha.

No need to ask questions about what I was doing in the classroom. It was easy – you just stood at the front of the class and explained for one hour what the present progressive was and then asked if there were any questions. :-0

That was in 1989 and I was a cowboy teacher in Bangkok. I loved it because I had just quit my job as an accountant in England. It was the first job I’d had that left me with a smile on my face when I went home every evening. I did that Bangkok job to earn some cash to save up money for the flight to Australia so I could continue backpacking. I worked every day for 11 weeks and decided I wanted to be a TEFL teacher.

After 2 1/2 years of living in cheap guest houses, tents and sleeping underneath buildings, I went back to England. I wanted my CELTA to continue my travels. I went to Izmir, Turkey to do my CELTA. And then the questions started coming. Thousands of them. The first one was – Just what was I doing in Thailand with a 99.3% teacher talking time?

More followed:

First peer-observation questions (Izmir):

1. Why isn’t the floor opening up so I can make my escape?
2. Why are my lips quivering uncontrollably.
3. Why do my peers have to stare at me like that?
4. Why aren’t all students answering all of my questions using the form I’ve just presented?
5. Why did that 28-minute role play take 28 seconds? What now?

Post CELTA questions (On the plane from Turkey to Japan):

6. How in the name of all methodologies and dangling participles can I teach English?
7. How does one become a butler?
8. What happens if they ask me to explain the difference between phrasal verbs constituted by a verb + particle + object(s) + wh-clauses, and those taking a transitive verb + preposition + pronoun + wh-clause. …….. What’s a phrasal verb?
9. Will they sell Jeremy Harmer books in Japan?
10. How many TEFL teachers drive BMWs?

First job interview questions (Osaka, Japan)

11. Why a question on how to teach the passive? He knows I just finished my CELTA. Grrrrrrrrr….
12. Will my 11 weeks of experience be enough to get this job?
13. Am I really being interviewed for a job in one of Japan’s biggest schools?
14. Will I have enough money left to survive to the next interview if I don’t get this job?
15. Why doesn’t he know what a CELTA is?

First lesson questions (Japanese conversation school, Japan)

16. Why aren’t they laughing at my really very hilarious jokes?
17. What’s “Are you having a good time?” in Japanese?
18. Why do they all nod when I ask them “Do you understand?” and then look confused when I say “OK, go.”?
19. Should I go for sushi after this lesson and then do karaoke and then go back to England?
20. Ahh… wait… someone answered… could there be a career  in this for me?

Well, they weren’t the 20 questions I had in mind at all when I started this post. They suddenly appeared from nowhere. The 20 questions I had thought about and written down will come in the next two posts.

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Wallwisher – 105 Classroom Ideas

June 26th, 2010

So how do we use Wallwisher with students?

1. Look at my explanatory Wall.

2. Look at the 105 ideas below.

For more info on how to set up your own Wallwisher, look at this post from Nik Peachey.

The 105 Ideas

Getting students interested

  1. Use what’s on the Wallwisher.com Home Page to introduce vocabulary.
  2. Create an activity for students to discuss the possible advantages of Wallwisher.
  3. Get them to “test” Wallwisher without teacher help and then write a critique of it and its ease of use.
  4. Students use the language in the black, green, purple and blue boxes on the Wallwisher home page to create a review or advertising spiel on the website.
  5. Students discuss the concepts in those boxes in relation to their own learning or digital life.
  6. Discussion over the pros and cons of online stickies versus real stickies (the ones you hold with your hands and stick to things). This could lead to a writing activity.

As a real notice board (all on different walls)

  1. Orientation for students new to a course.
  2. Put up the class and school rules.
  3. Make a class profile – one sticky for each student with a pic and personal info.
  4. Use a wall as a class or school calendar with stickies for different events. These can be revisited once they’ve past and updated to make a class journal.
  5. Make a wall for the class timetable.
  6. Days of the week / Months of the year (at the beginning of class).
  7. Notify our students or parents of homework assignments and keep them up to date with what’s happening in class.
  8. End-of-semester “best wishes” wall – students sign each others.
  9. Birthday wishes, get well messages, messages of congratulations or farewell. (See Marisa Constantinides’ wall for a lovely example.

As a resource sharer – each sticky opens to a new site / video / image

  1. Exam practice sites.
  2. Grammar practice sites.
  3. Games.
  4. Project sites – students or teacher posts ideas for the project.
  5. Exam stress and study tips.

Video

  1. Create video tasks for students to post responses to.
  2. Post YouTube / TeacherTube videos for students to comment on.
  3. Students post their own (home) videos and create mini explanations with different posts.
  4. News videos from the Internet – post two on the same news story and get students to post differences between them.
  5. Music videos – students post the lyrics to the song (great for listening).
  6. Movie trailers – get a Wall discussion going on the movie.
  7. Movie dialogues – Post a clip from a movie and get students to write out the script.
  8. Video script – students post ideas, dialogue, storylines for a class video.

Web quests

  1. Post different links on different stickies for students to visit, look at and do some writing on / do a project on. Great for exposing students to different media.
  2. Web quests – Type in each sticky  ‘find the answer to this / find a picture of… and paste the URL in the box.

Student walls

  1. Give students a theme and get them to create their own walls based around that theme.
  2. Get students to create fan walls based around a favourite band or celebrity.
  3. Me – Students make an ongoing profile – they can allow other students to add stickies to ask questions, add comments, make suggestions, etc.
  4. Students make a Wall showing their lifestory.
  5. Students make a Wall predicting their life from now.

Grammar

  1. Use images to get students to practicing different tenses and structures.
  2. Get students to post what they know about different verb tenses or grammar points.
  3. Sentence starters – Put the starter in the title of the Wall; students have to finish them by posting stickies.
  4. Make a wall for each grammar point introduced in class – include websites with examples of the grammar, student-created examples, screenshots of concordances, YouTube videos explaining the grammar. Students will have a good revision source when exams come.
  5. Teacher uses stickies as word magnets for students to move into the correct order.
  6. Grammar correction – Teacher posts student errors as stickies; students have to post corrections. This can be revisited over several days in students’ own time. It’s also good for teamwork – how many students on the same team posted the corrected versions?.
  7. Present perfect for life experiences – Teacher creates a “passport” using stickies of all the countries he/she has visited. Used to practice present perfect (she has been to…) and past simple (she went to X in 19XX). Also used for any other life experience.
  8. Comparatives and superlatives – Students post examples of these based on images, text, audio or video in stickies.

Speaking

  1. Post debates – put different arguments on different stickers for students to look at and respond to orally.
  2. Strange pictures – post strange images in stickies for students to talk about.
  3. Role plays – post different roles on different stickies – these become cues for the role plays.
  4. Agony aunts and uncles – Post stickies that ask for advice. Students discuss the advice to give.
  5. Talk for 60 seconds about… The teacher (or students) post images or videos in stickies for students to talk about for a minute.
  6. Creating stories – put different, unrelated  images in different stickies. Students have to create a story relating them. They cold also write the story down.

Brainstorming

  1. Can be used to elicit things students might not want to express in front of the class – they can post anonymously.
  2. Brainstorming writing topics – Add a comment to each later.
  3. Brainstorm ideas for what to do in tomorrow’s class / that ten minutes last thing on a Friday / as the next project…
  4. “Five things each please” – Wallwisher means all students can have time to contribute five things each (or whatever number the teacher decides) to a brainstorming session. This could take a day or two and means quieter students contribute equally.
  5. Picture ideas – Students could post images instead of words as part of the brainstorming session.

Feedback

  1. Teacher creates different walls for feedback on a lesson, course, idea, project, coursebook, evaluations of his/her teaching style… Leaving the wall up for a semester means students can add to it at will.
  2. Teacher can give feedback on the students – praise great behavior of highlight that which is not so great.
  3. Instant voting – Teacher can get instantaneous and anonymous feedback by asking students to post their opinion on a topic / class decision…
  4. Polls – Wallwisher is a great way of polling opinions.
  5. Teacher feedback – if the students have their own walls, the teacher can post feedback on each student’s wall.

Evaluations and Reviews

  1. Website evaluation – students leave stickies on their fave sites – learning or otherwise.
  2. Book reviews – create a special wall for books.
  3. Movie reviews – students put in trailers.
  4. Restaurant / club / entertainment guide to the local town / city …

School life – A separate wall for the following

  1. Open day wall.
  2. The school football team – news and results.
  3. Exhibitions.
  4. School trips.

Classroom management

  1. Use a wall to get ideas or to listen to everyone – great for allowing quieter, more shy students to voice their thoughts and opinions.
  2. Put the class seating arrangement on it. This is a great way to change the seating quickly – students simply look at where / how you’ve moved them
  3. Lesson aims – post them on the wall of that day / lesson.
  4. Assigning different groups different tasks – each group looks at the sticky that relates to them.
  5. Important information – the teacher can announce important information via Wallwisher. It works well if the teacher relays the information in front of the students, sticky by sticky – should keep students’ attention.

Writing

  1. Wallwisher is good for lower level students to focus on writing a short sentence of two with greater accuracy (due to the character count). The teacher could ask them to write about anything – their weekend, hopes, likes…
  2. Stickies for sentences (introduction, topic sentence, arguments, conclusion, etc.) Breaking the writing up like this makes it seem less like writing. The teacher can move the different parts around or add bits so all the stickies in a row make a better paragraph.
  3. Simplified process writing – the teacher comments on the short sentences students write.
  4. Images – students write about images the teacher posts on the wall.
  5. Memos – Students use stickies for what they are.
  6. Wish lists – Students write their wishes for class, life, hobbies… Other students can comment on these.
  7. Note-taking – students write down information they need for a trip, project etc. in note form.
  8. Essay plans – students write down their essay ideas on stickies. The teacher can choose the best plans to use as models of good practice.
  9. Poetry – students write short poems. Good for haiku.
  10. Dictation – the teacher posts audio in stickies for students to write down as a dictation.

Storytelling

  1. Collaborative story writing – students take it in turns to add the next sticky to the story.
  2. Students plan a story via stickies.
  3. The teacher posts a video that students use to tell the story – short cartoons are good for this.
  4. Stickies are a good way of moving the students’ writing around and inserting new parts to the story.

Reading

  1. In snippets – fun way to introduce a paragraph. Breaking the paragraph up into stickies means you can add online images or voiceovers to make it more interesting or easier to understand.
  2. Signs practice – Exams like KET, PET and IELTS have students match signs and notices – Wallwisher is ideal for this.
  3. Paragraph reconstruction – students put the sentences of a paragraph back in the correct order.

Vocabulary

  1. Create a wall based on a vocabulary theme (food, environment, sports…). The teacher could fill the stickies with online images, videos, sounds, etc or the students could make their own to share with each other.
  2. Matching – students match vocab items with definitions, pictures.
  3. Students post unknown vocabulary on the wall from a class reading.
  4. Library walls of idioms, phrasal verbs, synonyms…
  5. Word Choice: post several “bland” words and have students list synonyms that would be more interesting or descriptive.

Journals

  1. Students could create a wall they use as a semester journal – They could section off different parts of it for learning, activities, weekends, hobbies, friends etc. They could open their wall to their friends to comment on.
  2. The teacher could create a semester wall and log the class adventures for a record for students to look at after they graduate. They could contribute along the way.

Quizzes

  1. One sticky for each question. The quizzes can be based on images
  2. Multiple choice.
  3. Watch a video (a link in a sticky) and answer the questions in other stickies.
  4. Questions on pictures and images.
  5. Record quiz questions and stick the mp3 in a sticky.
  6. Use fotobabble.com to ask questions about a picture. See the truly excellent blog post from Ian James.

Multimedia projects

  1. Students make projects and fill their wall with links to video, pictures, music, websites, blogs, etc.

Matching activities

  1. Matching activities – pictures to vocab / vocab to meaning / text or paragraph reconstruction…

As moveable magnets

  1. Students move stickies around in ranking, ordering, matching, timeline… activities.

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World Cup Activities

June 15th, 2010

Five more activities on the FIFA 2010 World Cup

… just in case there aren’t enough already on the Internet :-)

A. World Cup sentence starters

  1. I think vuvuzelas are …
  2. So far, the World Cup is …
  3. It’s great South Africa is the host nation because …
  4. One thing the World Cup needs is …
  5. World Cup or Olympics? I think …
  6. The best player in the tournament …
  7. My favourite World Cup moment is …
  8. This World Cup will be best remembered for …
  9. If I were a player at the World Cup, I’d …
  10. The World Cup is …

B. Two-minute debates

Stand students in two rows facing each other. The teacher tells side A they firmly believe in the argument in column A. Do the same with side/column B. The teacher allows two minutes before moving to the next debate. Move one student along so everyone has a new partner for each debate.

A B
The World Cup is better than the Olympics. The Olympics is better than the World Cup.
South Africa is a great place for the World Cup. South Africa is the wrong place for the World Cup.
Vuvuzelas should be banned. Vuvuzelas should not be banned.
The World Cup should have goal line technology. Football doesn’t need goal line technology.
National leagues are more exciting than the World Cup. The World Cup is more exciting than national leagues.
The word is football, not soccer. The word is soccer, not football.
The World Cup was better years ago. The World Cup gets better every tournament.
Football is art. Football is a boring game.
The World Cup brings peace. The World Cup divides people.
The World Cup should be every year. Every 4 years is best.

C. Mystery World Cup headlines

Students talk about these mystery headlines:

  1. Wayne Rooney to play for Brazil
  2. World Cup to restart
  3. FIFA says teams must field 5 women players in final
  4. Cheering banned at World Cup games
  5. All World Cup games now only 20 minutes long
  6. World Cup winning captain to become UN boss
  7. Use of hands allowed at 2014 World Cup
  8. Lionel Messi now a goalkeeper
  9. Players must celebrate goals by dancing
  10. New barefoot rules for 2014 World Cup

D. New rules for a better 2014 World Cup

You are on the FIFA committee to change the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. With your committee member partner(s), discuss what changes you could make to…

  1. The ball
  2. The referee
  3. Substitutes
  4. The goals
  5. The offside rule
  6. The stadia
  7. Ticketing
  8. The players
  9. The spectators
  10. Player celebrations

E. World Cup associations

Agree with your partner on which thing in these categories best fits the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Share your ideas with the class. Vote on the best idea for each category.

  1. A colour
  2. An animal
  3. A food
  4. A feeling
  5. A time of the year
  6. An item of clothing
  7. A piece of technology
  8. A song
  9. A company
  10. A person

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The Beautiful Game 2010

June 7th, 2010

World Cup football stuff – including 110 all-skills lessons

The World Cup – The biggest sports spectacle in the world. Bigger than the Olympics. Bigger than a president’s inauguration. Bigger than The Simpsons. It’s the FIFA Soccer World Cup.

64 match report lessons – one for every game played (9 pages each, plus listening)
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/world_cup_news_2010/front.html

44 other lessons I made for the World Cup
Before proceeding with the post, some World Cup materials for your classes:

32  nine-page handouts, plus listening, plus online activities for each of the 32 teams at the World Cup at http://www.listenaminute.com

Spain Win the 2010 FIFA World Cup – A 13-page intermediate news lesson.
Germans Want Revenge on Paul the World Cup Octopus - An 11-page pre-intermediate news lesson.
2010 South Africa World Cup – a 9-page one-minute listening lesson.
World Cup Just for the Rich? – An 11-page pre-intermediate news lesson.
World Cup Insured for $9 Billion – A 13-page intermediate news lesson.
English Soccer Boss in World Cup Scandal – A 13-page intermediate news lesson.
Baboons a 2010 Soccer World Cup Problem – A 13-page intermediate news lesson.
Football – A 9-page listening lesson.
Lionel Messi Biography – A 14-page all-skills lesson.
Wayne Rooney Biography – A 14-page all-skills lesson.
Christiano Ronaldo Biography – A 14-page all-skills lesson.
David Beckham Biography – A 14-page all-skills lesson.

There will be a daily round-up (graded at pre-int / int level) of the tournament – again, 9 pages, listening, online stuff… at http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com – At least I hope to do this.

Larry Ferlazzo has the biggest list of World Cup resources I’ve ever seen. You’re spoilt for choice here.

Worth waiting for
It only comes around every four years but is definitely worth waiting for. This time it’s in South Africa – the first African nation to get the event.

What makes it so special? The beautiful game… the passion… the players… the goals… the action… the drama… the joy… the heartache… the English….

The English?
Well this is a blog for teachers of English and the language is an important part of this world sporting festival. In Japan, I loved listening to the Japanese commentators infusing hybrid English compounds into their stream of Japanese. My fave was “nice heading shooto” (nice header). The upcoming tournament will be my second in the UAE.

Some quotes on why football is the greatest game on Earth

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I’m very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.
Bill Shankly – One of Liverpool Football Club’s most successful managers

I fell in love with football as I would later fall in love with women: suddenly, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain it would bring.
Opening sentence from book “Fever Pitch,” written by Nick Hornby

An artist, in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find any difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud, who stretches cords from steeple to steeple and garlands from window to window. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity.
Eric Cantona – Legendary France international and Manchester United maestro

Some English football terms used as everyday idioms for your students

  • kick it into touch    (cancel something or say no to something)
  • score an own goal    (make a problem for yourself)
  • moved the goalposts  (made unfair changes without warning)
  • let the side down     (do badly so your team loses)
  • what time’s kick off     (when does the party / meeting / wedding… start?)
  • give it your best shot    (try your hardest)

20 items of World Cup trivia

  1. Protocol dictates that only heads of state and tournament winners are allowed to touch the World Cup trophy.
  2. World football’s governing body FIFA claimed a combined world audience of 26.3 billion TV viewers for the 2006 tournament, with 400 million watching the final.
  3. South American and European countries have won the World Cup 9 times each. No other continent has produced a World Cup champion.
  4. The winners since 1962 are from: South America (Brazil – 1962), Europe (England – 1966), South America (Brazil – 1970), Europe (West Germany – 1974), South America (Argentina – 1978), Europe (Italy – 1982), South America (Argentina – 1986), Europe (Germany – 1990), South America (Brazil – 1994), Europe (France – 1998), South America (Brazil – 2002) and Europe (Italy – 2006). This means in 2010 the winner will be from South America?
  5. Out of the 19 World Cups so far, 6 have been won by the host country.
  6. No European team has won a World Cup played outside of Europe.
  7. The highest attendance at a World Cup match was 199,854 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro in 1950 for the game between Uruguay and Brazil.
  8. Brazil are the only country to have appeared in every Finals – 19 tournaments from 1930 to 2010.
  9. The most common score in a World Cup finals match is 1-0 (18%).
  10. Gonzalez / Gonzales is the most common surname of World Cup players – 17.
  11. In 1930, the ‘football-crazy’ King Carol II of Romania personally selected the national team. He also asked their employers to give each player a three-month leave with full pay.
  12. The trophy was stolen while on exhibition in London just before kick-off of the 1966 finals. It was found hidden in a garden in South London.
  13. The term ‘group of death’ was first used by the Mexican press to describe Group 3 at the 1970 tournament. The four teams were England (reigning champions), Brazil (champions in 1958 & 1962), Czechoslovakia (finalists 1962) and Romania.
  14. Norman Whiteside was the youngest player ever to play at a World Cup Finals. He was 17 years and 42 days old when he played for Northern Ireland in the 1982 World Cup.
  15. The quickest World Cup sending off was just 56 seconds. Jose Batista got sent off for Uruguay against Scotland in the 1986 World Cup Finals.
  16. The 2010 World Cup qualification consisted of 853 games, which produced 2,344 goals and saw 268 countries eliminated.
  17. A total of 2,063 goals have been scored in World Cup Finals. Brazil are the leading scorers with 201.
  18. The smallest attendance at a World Cup finals match was 300 at Romania and Peru during the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay.
  19. The Frenchman Just Fontaine holds the record for the most number of goals at the Finals. He scored 13 in 1958.
  20. The longest surname of a player at the Finals was that of Lefter Kucukandonyadis who played for Turkey in the 1954 Finals.

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Technological Literacy

June 1st, 2010

No buts; get techy

Two recent tweets on Twitter prompted me to write this post.

The first tweet was from Tom Whitby (@TomWhitby), an ever-campaigning and always-sensible advocate of educational reform who wisely tells us we ignore technology at our peril:

A powerful question and one that should rightly make a lot of educators a tad uncomfortable. We all need to understand that embracing technology is an important part of being a teacher. It’s easy.

Two questions sprang to mind upon reading Tom’s words:

  1. How literate / illiterate am I?
  2. How literate do we need to be?

How literate / illiterate am I?

I think I do OK. I blog, I have websites and I do techy stuff in the classroom. I make mp3 files and get my students to use Web 2.0 tools. For some reason, my colleagues think I’m techy. For a very understandable reason, I worry I’m nowhere near techy enough. I would imagine this is a feeling common to most educators, regardless of how techy they are or appear to be. I like looking at new online tools but I always feel daunted by how much stuff is out there. And it keeps on coming.

I still have that procrastinatory-because-this-will-be-time-consuming-and-frustrating feeling each time I try a new techy online tool. Not sure why because all of the techy stuff I like is incredibly intuitive to use. Software developers seem to be spoiling us in producing instruction-less tools that we can be pretty much competent with after the first time of using.

How literate do we need to be?

Before attempting to answer this question, a reminder. Most of us are already quite technologically literate. We are all dab hands at word processing tools, spreadsheets, e-mail applications, uploading and downloading stuff on YouTube, Flickr, Pirate Bay (for the naughty ones)… We have all embraced social networks. We can all make something and put it online.

Now to answer the question – As a minimum for ESL/EFL teachers, I think we need to be tech-literate enough to be able to use a few tools for each of the four skills. That’s not much to start with. Perhaps…

Ten “buts” that need to disappear

These have all entered my head over the past 16 years, since the time I didn’t know where the on button was on my school’s first Mac. They get in the way of my technological literacy, but shouldn’t. I’ve added just one piece of advice to each.

1.  But I don’t know where to start!
Here are two excellent lists of cool tools posted on Twitter this week. “Tools for the 21st Century Teacher” from Michael Zimmer (@MZimmer557 on Twitter) and “A New Educational Paradigm” from David Deubelbeiss (@ddeubel on Twitter).

2.  But my students won’t be able to understand.
The second tweet I liked from Twitter this week, from DB (@Nunavut_Teacher on Twitter) answers this:

3.  But I can’t possibly keep up
Join Twitter. The greatest source of helpful and up-to-date professional development ever. You get cutting edge tools and developments  and wonderfully helpful people who will help you with them.

4.  But I’m not techy enough
If you can use e-mail, save a Word document and open a Facebook account, you can handle most Web 2.0 tools.

5.  But I don’t have time
Start with one tool – give yourself a month to be comfortable with it. That’s 12 tools in a year. Probably more than I know now.

6.  But I can’t use this in class
Check out the blogs – there are dozens of posts for each Web 2.0 tool giving excellent classroom ideas.

7.  But I teach English
And luckily, most of these tools cope with this language. And what’s more, require students to use it.

8.  But I can’t handle change
You handled e-mail, Word and Facebook.

9.  But I’m too busy
These tools will save you time. Make time to learn a few.

10.  But I’m too old
Mwahahahaha.

Get techy. No buts.

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Voki

May 21st, 2010

Create a speaking avatar and add your voice

Voki is a wonderful little tool that allows you to make your own avatar that speaks your messages. It appeals to me for these reasons:

  • it’s free
  • it’s incredibly easy to use – so intuitive – absolutely no training or reading is necessary
  • it’s great fun
  • my students really like it
  • it has many cool uses
  • you can embed it in your blog or website or e-mail it to someone

Here’s one of my Voki avatars:

I typed my message and selected the voice and accent from the drop-down menus. You sometimes have to type phonetically – For the avatar to pronounce ‘Voki’, I had to type ‘vocky’.

I usually try and choose the hair, face shape, clothing options that most resemble me. I can’t seem to find an option for the few bits of hair I have on the sides of my bald pate – guess they might come in the next version :-)

Cool voice options:

  • you can type what you want the avatar to say, as I did above (the text-to-speech is pretty good)
  • you can record your own message that your avatar will speak and lip-sync to
  • you can send a phone message to Voki that your avatar will use
  • you can browse an upload an MP3 file from your computer

All very easy. All very cool and fun. I also like moving the cursor around the screen and watching my avatar’s eyes follow it – small things like that amuse me.

Classroom uses

1. Setting up

a. Groundwork
Explore with your students the concept of avatars. Should they look like yourself or should you let your creative juices take over? Introduce the James Cameron movie into the discussion. You could do one of my Listen A Minute.com lesson on avatars.

b. Purpose
Discuss with your students what they could use their avatar(s) for. You could create a reading exercise and write a short piece on your thoughts on and uses of avatars. This could be a model for students’ writing.

2. The Voki website and creating an avatar

a. Exploit the web page
Quite often we send our students to websites and expect them to know all of the vocabulary. There’s a lot we could do to make use of the language on a page for learning purposes. The Voki homepage is a great source of “modern” and “techy” vocab, which I guess is fairly high-frequency (?) among younger people.

Examples on the Voki homepage: customize, social networks, participate, personalize, advertising, profile, innovative, creativity, groundbreaking, upload, privacy policy, terms of service…

Encourage students to explore on their own by clicking on the links that show the video or go to the forum… This can give lower level learners the confidence to explore more on the Net.

b. Describing people
Students can choose from quite an array of options for their avatar. This gives the teacher a lot of very useful vocabulary to work with. It has all the facial features, hairstyles, skin colours, uniforms and even a whole section of bling (that’s ‘accessories’ for those my age and older).

c. Nationalities
Another useful opportunity for vocabulary practice. A drop-down menu provides you with the accent for your Voki – you can choose from Basque to Czech to Galician to Polish to Turkish and lots more in between (including US and UK English).

3. The avatar

a. Character development
Once students have their avatar, they write their own profile for it and develop its character. Students can write questions to each other’s avatars or comment on them.

b. Question the avatars
Students write questions for each other’s avatars.

c. Comparisons
Students write comparisons between themselves and their avatar.

d. Grammar practice
Students write about their avatar. The writing fits the grammar being taught by the teacher (what the avatar did yesterday, what it’s going to do in the future, likes and dislikes…).

e. Family and friends
Students create a family and friends for their avatar. These can be additional Vokis or those they create for a written activity.

4. Avatar communication

a. Ice-breaker
Use the avatar to introduce yourself to your students or for students to introduce themselves to others.

b. E-mail
Get students to record a Voki and send the message to you. It could accompany homework with a short message about their work, a request, an apology for being late…

c. Class wiki / website
Students record Vokis to welcome visitors to their blog / wiki / website.

d. Projects
i. Make an online “class wall” of Vokis – all students introduce themselves.
ii. Next time you do a class project, get students to present it all with Vokis.
iii. Pass the Voki. The teacher records a Voki message and e-mails it to the first student. He or she records what he/she hears and sends it to student 2. Repeat the process until the final student Vokis the teacher. The class see if the final Voki is the same as the first.
iv. Voki soap opera – The class creates a soap opera based on Vokis.

Resources

40 (and counting) more links to cool stuff on Voki

Plus…

Please tell us how you use Voki by posting a comment. Thank you :-)

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Posted in Voki | 9 Comments »

Adblockers

May 12th, 2010

Will adblockers bring the end of free websites?

What are adblockers?

They are add-ons / plug-ins people can download to their web browsers. They block anything written with javascript and flash. This means they automatically block ads and in many cases interactive activities. One of these add-ons is Firefox’s biggest download. Millions more people are using adblockers every week.

The bad news

Many English language teaching websites that make materials available for free rely on ads (from Google or elsewhere) to keep going. These include sites like mine (BreakingNewsEnglish.com, Listen A Minute.com, ESL Discussions.com, etc).

Adblocking software is effectively strangling the revenue streams from these sites.

Many webmasters and materials creators are deciding to call it a day.

The bottom line is that many more sites will go offline because of the damage adblockers are doing.

What can you do?

If you have adblocking software, please “whitelist” the sites you do not want to go out of business. There are filters within the menu of the add-on / plug-in for you to allow ads on those sites. You will be really helping their survival.

What can free websites do?

Be responsible and filter the ads on your site. Below is a site that perhaps needs to think a lot more about who will potentially see these ads, and less about maximizing ad revenue from absolutely minimal content.

This particular graphic shows why many people, justifiably, have got fed up with ads and are turning to adblockers. This website page shows the famous diet and IMVU ads encircling just EIGHT words of content.

I teach young Arab women in the Middle East. Any “fleshy” ads can cause offense to them, even in cartoon / avatar-like format. I block them from appearing on all of my sites.

The future of my sites

I really don’t know what to do. I wouldn’t really be exaggerating to say the bottom fell out of my world when I came across adblockers and what they are doing to my sites. I have worked pretty hard every day for six years on my sites. I’m now wondering whether it’s worthwhile continuing, given the fact that one day (probably very) soon, everyone will have adblocking software.

I will have to make one of three choices soon:

  1. call it a day on my sites altogether (really can’t entertain this thought)
  2. start charging subscriptions (don’t really want to do this)
  3. ask for donations (not sure if this would work)

I’m thinking if I can make more sites, I won’t have to resort to asking people to pay.

Your comments would be very welcome. I need all the advice I can get.

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Posted in Adblockers | 48 Comments »

10 Blogs

April 30th, 2010

“10 blogs worth keeping an eye on”

Three of my PLN recently included me in their list of “10 blogs worth keeping an eye on”. Each of them made my day. There are so many fantastic blogs out there it’s quite humbling to be on these lists. Particularly because of the enormous admiration I have for these people. So thank you Sue Lyon-Jones, Janet Bianchini and Henrick Oprea.

So what’s this stamp below?


I’m going to borrow the words of Janet Abruzzo, who described it so well, to explain more about it:

“It is part of an initiative called “Vale a pena ficar de olho nesse blog”, which means “It’s worth keeping an eye on this blog”. The chosen blog has to copy the picture above, with a link to the blog from which it has received the award . Then write ten more links to the blogs which you think are well worth a visit. They in turn if they would like to, of course, copy the image above and link to 10 blogs.”

Here are  Janet’s,  Sue’s and Henrick’s lists.

So difficult to choose just ten

Almost impossible. I chose those that uploaded posts very regularly. Here they are:

Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day
A constant source of very informative posts, links and updates on all things ESL, ELL and EFL from one of ESL’s most active bloggers. If you need a list of resources – Larry is sure to have a good one.

EFL Classroom 2.0
From David Duebelbeiss, who says:  “When 1 Teaches, 2 Learn.” Stuff on language, linguistics, Web 2.0. as well as teaching recipes. From the creator of the EFL Classroom 2.0 ning. This blog is full of original and creative ideas. Always such compelling reading. You know you’re really gonna enjoy the new post.

Teacher Reboot Camp
Shelly Terrell’s posts on the latest developments and tools available to educators, from Twitter to Second Life. Her dynamism and entusiasm are evident throughout this must blog and are infectious.

Jason Renshaw’s Blog
A blog from the maker of EnglishRaven.com. Jason gives us his (often stirring) thoughts on ESL resources and activities and the wider world of English language teaching.

Kalinago English
Musings, information, ideas and reviews on ESL teaching and educational technology from the indomitable and wise blogger Karenne Sylvester, who always pops up in times of need :-) .

Marxist TEFL Group
The Marxist TEFL Group calls itself  an ‘alternative campaigning’ blogging group focusing on the language teaching industry. They say their “ideas are rooted in the day to day experiences of ordinary teachers and language learners”. Always a real ride of a read.

Nik Peachey’s Learning Technology Blog
Tips, resources and teaching materials to help EFL and ESL teachers use ICT and new technology. A must if you want to use new tools in your teaching.

Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog
A well-conceived blog about teaching, learning, reflecting and being a 21st century learner & teacher. Contains excellent reviews of the very latest digital tools for the classroom. I have no idea where Ozge finds so many resources, but am glad she does.

The TEFL Tradesman
In his own words:  “Sandy McManus – a.k.a The Tefl Tradesman – is dedicated to telling it like it is, spilling the beans, and dishing the dirt on the UK’s tacky TEFL trade and all those who are unprincipled enough to partake of it. If you work in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), or are quite simply mad enough to even contemplate it, this is the site to check out every week!” – Says it all :-)

Burcu Akyol’s Blog
Impressions, reflections, reviews, tips and resources from an [inspiring] English teacher, blogger and international conference organizer. The blog is full of very good guest posts and explanations about some of Burcu’s adventurous and courageous projects.

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Posted in Blogs | 9 Comments »

Paired and group writing activity

April 27th, 2010

20 benefits of paired / group writing

This is one of those activities I’ve never read about in ideas and resources books but which is so simple and effective it must be in one somewhere.

It is the idea of communal writing – putting students into pairs, or groups of three, four, five… and getting each student in each pair / group to write exactly the same thing, down to the spelling, punctuation, paragraph breaks, etc.

(Of course each pair / group will give you a different piece of writing.)

My instructions to students are as follows:

You will write as a pair/group.

You will all write EXACTLY the same thing as the other student(s) in your pair / group.

You will all write at the same time (please do not make one draft and then let other students copy it later).

EVERYTHING you write in your pair / group must be the same. Check that your spelling, grammar and punctuation are the same as those of your partner.

If there are things you do not agree on, write them on a separate piece of paper and I’ll take it later, or quickly e-mail it to me.

Why do I think this is an utterly and totally fantastic exercise?

  1. It’s collaborative.
  2. It turns a writing activity into a multi-skills task.
  3. Students learn from each other.
  4. In my experience, students tend to think more about what to write, which produces better quality ideas. It’s great watching students have fun brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other.
  5. It’s a good opportunity for students to share their writing exam tips and hints (in their L1 if necessary).
  6. The finished piece of writing is often of a quality better than if students were to write individually.
  7. Mistakes are more likely to be ironed out within the group, leaving any incorrect work to be errors, which are more useful for the teacher to work on.
  8. The activity contains many elements of process writing, but student controlled.
  9. If you assign group names and tell students their work will go up on the board, they tend to write better for the future audience of their written work.
  10. Students think and talk about spelling, punctuation and grammar.
  11. It makes a nice change from individual writing.
  12. It gives the teacher a whole lot more time to monitor – five pieces of writing among 20 students is a lot easier than 20 individual pieces of writing.
  13. It drastically cuts down on marking / correcting papers – I take one finished piece of writing from each group (making the assumption the other students in each group wrote the same thing) and correct it.
  14. Give feedback is quicker. I return a copy to each student in the group and talk to the group as a whole.
  15. Stronger students can help weaker students.
  16. The teacher can use the points students do not agree on for a boardwork correction stage.
  17. If students mail the teacher the points they do not agree on, (s)he has a ready-made sample of work to copy and paste into an activity on the smart board / projector. This sample is likely to be useful in monolingual groups in that it is likely to consist of common errors.
  18. It’s fantastic for whole class writing project work. You can swap students around so each new student adds ideas to the original group.
  19. The activity can be used for grammar test practice activities where accuracy is key.
  20. It can be used for spelling tests and is fun if you make it a competition – the group with the most correct answers being the winner.

I hope you try this and then write a comment below. Or you could just write a comment below :-)

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Posted in writing | 19 Comments »

Jigsaw Listening

April 19th, 2010

21 Reasons for Making Your Own Audio Files for Jigsaw Listening

My school’s resource room is brimming to the rafters with listening materials. There are CDs that go with coursebooks, audio accompaniments to graded readers, listening courses and a whole lot more. Add to this the millions of files online on websites and via podcasts and you have several billion hours of listening material.

But is that good enough?

Is it exactly what your students need in that lesson?

I’ve usually found the answer to these questions to be ‘no’. Sure, it’s practice, but it all seems too “textbooky / EFL classroom-ish”. None of the CDs, tapes (remember those?) or MP3s and WAVs was exactly what I wanted for my class.

So a long time ago, in 2005, I started making my own listening materials, using the free audio editor and recorder Audacity, which is my favourite piece of software ever in the whole wide world, ever.


This post isn’t a how-to on Audacity, so I’ll direct you to Russell Stannard’s excellent teacher-training video for that.

Here I’ll describe a few things that work for me when making jigsaw listenings tailored to my students’ needs of the moment.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Jigsaw.svg/600px-Jigsaw.svg.png

Jigsaw Listening

OK. When was the last time you saw a jigsaw listening CD? Never. Thought so. I think jigsaw listening is one of the most valuable communicative activities around. It’s an audio information gap activity. Different groups of students listen to different parts of a text, then exchange information with each other to complete a task – piece the info together, find out who or what is being talked about, etc. It is great as the centerpiece of an integrated all-skills lesson.

The fantastic things about recording jigsaw listenings yourself are:

  1. you control the level and content of the audio text.
  2. you can build the rest of the lesson around the jigsawed listenings.
  3. you can use them to recycle vocabulary, grammar and other language taught earlier.
  4. you can make games out of them.
  5. you can make the listenings from student-generated work.
  6. you can use them to introduce factual content (giving each group different sets of facts).
  7. students love the fact they have to listen and then share and find out.
  8. the element of having to pass on information heard seems to make students “listen harder”.
  9. today’s technology means iPhones, laptops and classroom PCs do away with the need to drag 12 tape recorders/CD players to class.
  10. you can use the jigsaw listening for anything – introduce an important piece of school news by cutting it into different recorded pieces.
  11. get students to put events in a chronological order.
  12. you can beef up a lackluster textbook reading be recording it as a jigsaw reading.
  13. you can add intrigue to graded readers by creating jigsawed summaries.
  14. focus on different tenses by giving groups parts of the story set in the past, present and future.
  15. use it as a critical thinking activity – give students different parts of a set of instructions  / cooking recipe / directions, etc for them to piece back together logically.
  16. liven up mystery stories.
  17. explain grammar by giving students different parts of the puzzle.
  18. explain word families by giving students different information about a word (collocations, parts of speech, antonyms & synonyms, use in phrasal verbs, etc).
  19. it can save you time (especially if you re-use the audio). They can take as little as ten minutes (the time it normally takes to do three one-minute recordings plus editing, saving, etc. The students then spend ages (all quality time) on the listening and piecing back together of the text.
  20. it’s free.
  21. you never have to visit that dusty resource room again.

If you have other suggestions for jigsaw listening, please share them in the comments below.

Thank you.

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Posted in Audio Files | 15 Comments »

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