Archive for the 'efl' Category

Open-Source Online Classroom

Published
by
Seth
on June 23, 2008
in efl, language teaching, tools and video
. 4 Comments

video conferencing for language education

When you think of online language education, you first think of a teacher and a class of language students, all talking together via a video link, right? Well, the reality unfortunately is a little different.

Unless the school or university you work for has a lot of money to invest in hardware or software (which your students are going to have to end up paying for in higher course fees) you’ll probably be teaching languages online with tools that look very much like a traditional webpage. This is great when we don’t need to talk to our students “live” , but when we do, surely we can manage better than this?

I found Dimdim recently, which allows you to create your own video conference and online meeting classroom, for up to 20 participants, for free! There are no complicated downloads for the meeting participants and no expensive hosting packages for the teacher or school. Dimdim also includes all sorts of useful features for online language teachers like a whiteboard, one to one chat and group chat as well as other handy features like a shared desktop, PowerPoint and PDF file sharing.

For those of us that want unlimited numbers of conference participants, you can even download all the files needed for free and setup your own online meetings server. You will need your own webhosting , something that many schools will already have, you may also need to upgrade the webhosting service you have to a more powerful package, but when you compare this to the prices of commercially available online meeting and conferencing packages, you are still likely to be saving a large amount. You can also then start to fiddle about with the look of your Dimdim server so that it matches your school’s identity and look.

I must admit, I have only tried out Dimdim with one other person so far, but it seemed easy enough to set up. I had hoped that I would be able to see the video of all participants, but the video broadcasting is only for the teacher. Dimdim do say they are working on a version with “Multiple Presenters,” we’ll have to see.

I did like the fact that you could choose whether to allow your students to only have audio or text chat, students can “put up their hand” to allow them to attract the teacher’s attention, the teacher can also decide how many participants can speak at one time (online lessons can get chaotic if everyone talks at once.) There are a host of other useful features, certainly too many to list here.

If you’d like to try out Dimdim with us, please feel free to come along to an online meting I have setup at 09.00 C.E.T. on Saturday 28th June. We will be discussing how you could use Dimdim with a class, and will try out several of the features of the software.

To access the meeting, simply follow this URL: http://tinyurl.com/6zlrt7

Looking forward to meeting you online soon!

Real life stories, told in one sentence.

Published
by
Seth
on May 30, 2008
in Lesson Ideas, blogging, efl, language teaching and writing
. 7 Comments

One Sentence StoriesI’ve seen a few simple and easy to use web sites around recently that I’ve thought “That would be a nice activity for a language lesson in a computer lab, or a great humanistic task for blogging with language students.” One Sentence is one of these sites.

The concept is really simple. I’ll leave it to One Sentence’s own blurb to explain:

One Sentence is an experiment in brevity. Most of the best stories that we tell from our lives have one really, really good part that make the rest of the boring story worth it.

This is about that one line.

This is about telling the most interesting or poignant story possible in the least amount of words.

This is about small bite-sized pieces of extraordinary lives and ordinary lives alike… the happy, the sad, the funny, the depressing.

Well, I for one liked the sound of that. Especially when I read a few of the one-sentence-stories that had been submitted. Here are a few of the ones I liked for their poignancy, humour or their touching nature:

callmejackieo

We were going to stay up all night recording experimental music on his computer like John and Yoko, but then his mom came in and told us it was time for him to go to bed.

Less one friend

I hadn’t seen her in twelve years, but my heart still broke when I saw her picture on CNN with “Missing” underneath it.

OregonGirl75

I braced myself, stoic and still as stone, as they wheeled your body into the room, and I didn’t break down until I realized your long hair was still wet from the last shower you took.

Dan Beeston

One day I’ll be angry when she squeezes my toothpaste from the wrong end, but four years in, it’s still endearing.

I don’t think in one short page I’ve ever read so many moving, touching or simply human stories as I did in One Sentence. Reading through the stories, I guess you’ll agree that they are not for a glib, 5 minute lesson filler. I would suggest that you only use the site with students who know each other well, or that get on together. I guess they really aren’t suitable for use with a children’s class either.

So, how can we use this site with our students? It’s actually remarkably simple. Really it is!

  1. First I would ask my students to read trough a few of the sentences on the stories page.
  2. I would then ask the students to work together and tell each other which stories they liked and which they didn’t like. Seeing as they are only one sentence storie you students could probably do this just from memory, even if they are low level students.
  3. If you wanted to extend this activity, you could ask the students to work together and try to orally fill in the gaps to make the one sentence story more like a one or two paragraph story. Either that or you could ask them to write it out on their own. I would then ask my students to work together in groups to re-tell the stories in their new, fuller versions.
  4. Finally, and I’m sure you guessed this from the beginning, I think if you had the right class, you should ask them to write their own one-sentence-story and submit it to the site. It needn’t be as personal as the ones on the site if your students didn’t want to, but I would encourage them to write a true story in keeping with the ethos of the site.

I’ve submitted my own story. It was nice andsimple to do. just go to http://www.onesentence.org/submit/ type your name, an email address and your story and off you go.

Can you find mine?

Seth.

Click* ICT Teacher Training

Published
by
Seth
on May 2, 2008
in efl, ict, language teaching and professional development
. 1 Comment

One of the reasons I posted so little (be honest Seth, you posted nothing) between January and April this year, is all the hard work that has been going on behind the scenes of the “Click*” project I’m involved in. Click* is the (newly chosen) name for a comprehensive teacher-training course, funded by the European Community’s Leonardo programme.

Together with a group of truly fabulous colleagues from various institutions around Europe including WSL Czestochowa, The Open University U.K. and EAQUALS all led by Dresden Technical University we have been beavering away to produce what I’m pretty sure is going to be a really high-quality course.

We have blended our different experiences and expertises together to produce a wide ranging set of course modules from the academic theory of how to teach languages online, through simple to follow, expertly written guides of how and why to use WebQuests, all the way to basic guides on blogging, podcasting wikis etc.

I’m really confident that the materials are of such high quality that the project will be a great success. If the demand for the courses is anything to go by (we were more than three times over-subscribed for our first round of piloting) I’m sure the project will go brilliantly!

Twitter - MicroBlogging.

Published
by
Seth
on April 29, 2008
in blogging, efl, ict and language teaching
. 2 Comments

I’ve just recently discovered “Twitter” http://twitter.com thanks to online colleagues such as Graham Stanley , great blogs like Common Craft and (strangely enough) the BBC Radio 4 program “iPM” which recently discussed Twittering.

Twitter has been described as “Micro Blogging” or in other words: like a blog, but much smaller. When I write a Twitter post (a Tweet!) I can only use a maximum of 140 characters. These get sent to my Twitter homepage. Any of my friends or colleagues who want to have short, personal updates on “What I’m up to at the moment” can check by my homepage to read about what I’m doing and get a quick update on my life. They can also follow me automatically via RSS if they want to. This video by Common Craft explains the beauty of Twittering nicely:

One of the things I like about Twitter is the tiny size of posts you can make to it, 140 characters disappears really quickly. This means that language students don’t need to feel pressured into writing huge, long blog posts (which I have found can be off-putting for students who are writing a “normal” blog.) With Twitter the emphasis is on posting short, but sweet posts and often.

Another thing I really like about Twitter is that you can send your Twitter posts from a mobile phone (Moblogging?) This could also give our students more freedom to practice their English when it’s most convenient to them. Out in the centre of town? Seen something amazing? Let your classmates and friends know all about it! Practice your English while your doing so!

I’d also like to see if it’s possible to centrally “aggregate” several Twitter feeds. I was thinking of trying to set up a wiki which I’d use to tie all the Tweets from a class together in one place. It would also make for some really interesting inter-personal reading. Ever wondered what your class mates are doing on a Sunday evening? Check Twitter and see if they are telling you! If you look to the right of this post you’ll see my own Twitter feeds.

I’m sure I’ll be using this tool in my next A2 (Elementary Level) classes. I think Twitter will be a great way for my students to practice using the Present Continuous. I also want to try it out with a higher level class I am working with, we are blogging together, but not all the students are able to find the time to post regularly. Maybe they will with Twitter?

In the mean time, does anyone know about any “Twitter Aggregators” out there?I’d love to try out the idea of collecting my students’ posts together all in one, central place.

All the best and have fun!

Seth :-)