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‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات project work. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات project work. إظهار كافة الرسائل

Getting Video Tasks Online

Comment
I've been aware of 280Slides for some time now, but haven't really tried to use it much as I'm a very keen user of Keynote on my MAC, but this week I was looking around for ways to get video type lessons online and discovered what an incredibly easy and useful tool 280Slides is for this.


Basically 280Slides is an online tool for creating presentations. It works in a very simple way and has a very intuitive interface which is very quick to understand. It has a few basic themes and layouts and you can do all the usual things like adding text, shapes and images to your presentations.

The two key areas though that I like about 280Slides are:

1. It's really easy to import and embed video into you presentation. Just click on the 'Movies' icon add a search term. Find your video and double click it and there it is in the the presentation.

2. It's really easy to share the presentations online. Just click on the 'Share' icon and you get the options to publish to Slideshare, email as a PowerPoint or (and this is the one I like best) get an embed code for your blog or direct URL.



This is a quick easy lesson I created and you can compare the two last options below.

This is the embed version, just click the bottom right icon to see it full screen.


This is the direct link version: Led Zeppelin or the Beatles

How about using this with students
Well as you can see this is a great easy way create materials that exploit video.
  • You can create listening tasks with questions and comprehension questions.
  • You can get students to create their own video related projects by getting them to import video into the slides and write about them.
  • Great for digital narrative which combines video images and text
  • You could get students to import significant news clips and respond to them.
  • You can combine video into grammar presentations with videos that demonstrate grammar points
  • You could just use it to make your presentations and get them online
What I like about 280 Slides
  • Really quick easy to understand interface.
  • Works in the browser so no software to download or install.
  • Great way to make YouTube videos accessible without sending students to the site.
  • Easy enough for students to use.
  • Free and no sign of advertising.
  • The only information they ask for is email address.
  • Really quick way to get materials online without having to illegally download video or have server / web hosting space.
  • Really professional looking results.
  • Embedding the videos into sides with tasks might discourage students from wandering off to look at other YouTube videos.
  • Great to have an embed code for blogs.

What to watch out for
  • It's still in Beta and free and I can't see how anyone makes a living from the site, so they may start charging or advertising, but until then ...
  • If YouTube is blocked in your school, this probably won't solve the problem, though you can get students to access your video activities from home.
  • It doesn't have all the powers of a commercial product like PowerPoint, but how many people use those powers anyway?
Hope you find 280Slides useful.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: Authentic Genres

Comment
Over the past few years video sharing websites have become increasingly specialised, bringing about the development of different 'genres' of video sharing sites. As online video increasingly competes with TV this has also brought about the development of genres of 'micro shows'. These are complete episodes of shows that take place within 2 - 5 mins. This is an ideal length both for or 'digital native' students with their characteristically shorter attention span, but also for our English language students with their limited ability to cope with longer streams of authentic input. This more specialised content is also ideal for teachers developing materials for content and language integrated learning (CLIL)courses or for teachers who want to develop video projects.

Product Reviews
There are an increasing number of specialised video sharing websites like ExpoTV . This one enables users to create and share videos that review new products. This is a great source of authentic material and a great project for students who can create and upload their own video.
You can find some tips and suggestions for exploiting these sites at: Using Product Reviews

How to Videos
Video is a great way to teach people because you can actually see how they do things as well as listen to them . For the same reason it’s a very powerful tool for conveying the meaning of language. MonkeySee is a really useful website that contains lots of high quality short clips, showing how to do a variety of things from dancing, learning a musical instrument through to sales and marketing techniques and even building sandcastles!

The videos are user generated so anyone can create their own series and upload it.
Read more about how to use these videos here: Using 'How to' videos

Advertising projects
The Rollmio site was created to connect companies with creative amateur marketers. The site publicises information about companies that want web based video advertisements and anyone can then create an advertisement upload it to the site and try to win the contract. This can be a good insight for higher level students into how advertisements are created.

Here you can see some examples that a class of higher level English students created: Ad projects
To find suggestions on how to use this site with your students read: Advertisement Project


Sharing opinions
Big Think is a video sharing website that aims to create debate and the exchange of ideas. They invite very influential experts to record their opinions on a range of topics. Visitors to the site can watch these videos, vote to agree or disagree and also record their own video response. You can also set up your own debates on the site by recording your own opinion, either on the same topics as the experts or on a topic of your choice.

To read more about how to use this resource, go to: Video debating website


Micro soaps
The ability to share short video clips over the Internet through websites such as YouTube has led to the creations of various new ‘micro’ genre of TV programmes.

One very popular example is the 3 minute soap opera ‘ Lonely Girl 15’. This started a couple of years ago with a girl in the USA called ‘Bree’ talking to a webcam about here life. It soon attracted millions of viewers and it was discovered that the girl was a professional actress and the show was being produced by a small company.



There are now many series and a parallel programme based in the UK called Kate Modern. This kind of material, though at times sensitive carries a lot of potential for classroom exploitation. The programmes can be used to portray and contrast the youth culture of USA and UK as well as highlighting linguistic differences. You should be careful which episodes you choose though as some are unsuitable for younger learners.

To read more about thee micro soap operas go to: Iconic teen video

I hope that this posting has given you a look at some of the genres of online video that are available and how to use them. If you have a particular favourite genres please do leave a comment about it.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

Artificial Intelligence Chat bots and EFL ESL

Comment
Earlier this week I posted a short article to my Quick Shout blog about a new site called Virsona that enables teachers and students to develop their own AI ( Artificial Intelligence) chat bots.

Since then I have been trying the site a bit more, developing tutorials and thinking about how we can use it with our EFL ESL students.

To get an idea of what a 'chat bot' is, got to this page and start asking Abraham Lincoln some questions: http://www.virsona.com/ecchat.aspx?cvid=212
The chat bot has beeen programmed with lots of information about Abrham Lincoln and each time you enter a question the bot searches it's log and tries to match key words from your question with its log information.

This all sounds very compicated, but the site actually makes it quite simple to create your own bot which can either be yourself, a fictional character or a historical or real person.

The students can add information to their chat bot in a number of ways:
  • Write diary log entries
  • Email in the information
  • Add answers to random questions
  • Type in questions and answers
  • Ask the bot questions and then correct the answers.
Here are a couple of video tutorials showing how it is done:
So how do we use this with our EFL ESL students?
All of these ways can be very useful for generating meaningful language practice.

The virtual you - Get students to recreate themselves as a chat bot. They can upload a photograph of themselves and generate random questions to answer. You could also get them to write diary entries for a week or two. Then at the end of term you could get the students to share their chat bots and see which one is the most convincing. this is a noce way of combining a range of personal information questions with a learningg diary. You could also create one for yourself which students could interegate or get the URLs of your students' bots so that you could find out more about them.

Your virtual celebrity - You could ask students to do research on a favourite celebrity or person from history and then use the information they find to create a chat bot of that person. A number of these are already under development, though Lincoln is the only one open for you to chat with at present.
Grammar bot - You could get your students to create their own grammar bot with infformation they have learnt about various grammar points.

Vocabulary bot - Likewise you could try to get students to create a vocabulary bot that has definitions for the new vocabulary they are learning.

Topic expert - You could ask groups of students to create topic experts based around various general knowledge areas then they couldd work in teams to challenge each others' bots in a test of knowledge.

Interview Lincoln - Get your students to interview Lincoln and see what they can find out about him. See if they can decide if it is a real person answering them.

What I like about this site
  • It's free and obviously aimed at educationalists
  • I'm fascinated by AI and how it can be applied to language learning and language production so..
  • It's great that they have ma de it easy to create your own bot, with out having to know about the technology
  • I like the selection of random questions it can get students to answers (a task in itself)
  • Looks like it could develop into a novel way of sharing knowledge

What I'm not so sure about
  • The site is obviously still under development andd a few things don't always work (I had a few problems trying to upload questions and answers in the 'Teach' section
  • The site carries some advertising
  • Not sure about the ethics of creating bots of real people (not sure if i would want someone else putting words in my bots' mouth)
  • Bots aren't real people and sometimes they make stupid mistakes, but as long as our students are aware of this then we could maake it part of the challenge. It might well be worth telling your students about 'The Turing Test': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test a challenge designed in 1950 to try to trick people into thinking a machine was human.

Well for all the problems I still think this is a site that students can enjoy and which can encourage them to produce a lot of accurate language in text form (bots don't understand bad grammar or spelling).

Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:


Best

Nik Peachey

Photo Assignments for EFL ESL Students in Second Life

Comment
One of the things that I really like about Second Life is the rich visual imagery and the creativity that many of the builders there have put into designing their Islands. We can exploit this along with the Second Life snapshot tool to create stimulating projects for our students.

Here's a quick video showing you how to take a snapshot.



Here's another showing you how to access and use the snapshot controls so that you can get better camera angles.



So how do we use this with EFL ESL students?
We can use this in a number of ways to enhance writing activities.

Send a postcard activity - One of the options on the snapshot interface is to email the images we take to other people. When we do this we can add an email text telling them about the image or what we have found at that place etc. We can ask our students to imagine that this is a postcard to the class and to write about an imaginary holiday they are having.

Photo journalist - We can send our students on photojournalism assignments. These could be to report on events that they attend, or on islands or installations that we've asked them to investigate. The students can save the images to their hard drive and then either import them into a word processing document or create their own Second Life News blog about the events.



Photo stories - Students can work together using their avatars to create a sequence of images that tell a photo story. They can enhance the images by using a word processor to add dialogue bubbles to the images. This encourages them to collaborate both in class and while they are in Second Life.


Research Assignments - We can send each students to a different location in Second Life to do a research task. They can then send an email with an image and a report from that destination telling other students what is there and why they should visit it. In class the students can then read the reports and decide which place they want to visit.

Photo Fashion - You can ask students to work in pairs to dress up and take photographs of each other in different Second Life clothing. They can then use a word processor to import the images into a fashion column, describing the clothes etc. Again these could be published on a blog or printed up as a class project.

Working with students in Second Life needs care, so always be sure to set tasks and check your locations for suitability before sending them anywhere. If you are working with teens then be sure to use the Second Life Teen Grid.

To see more Second Life video tutorials go to my YouTube playlist

Related links:
The videos used in this posting were originally commissioned by The Consultants-E and are part of an introductory course for teachers they deliver on Edunation Island II and are used with their kind consent.

Best

Nik Peachey

Using Product Reviews

Comment
Product review sites are becoming ever more popular on the internet, and why not after all? If you are going to spend money buying something, it's always a good idea to see what other people who bought that same product think of it.

ExpoTV is just that kind of site. It has a collection of, mostly home made, video clips made by ordinary people, mostly from North America, talking about the products they have bought. There is a huge collection of material here on a whole range of products from computer accessories to clothing, make up, cars, video games, children's toys and even trucks!

Here's an example product review. This one is of one of my favourite products, Apple's i-pod touch




What I liked about the site
  • The clips are reasonably short and download quite quickly.
  • It's free and you don't have to register unless you want to add comments or upload your own video.
  • The site is rich with the kinds of language and vocabulary that students find quite useful in their 'real lives' especially if they do have to buy things from websites or while traveling in an English speaking country.
  • The videos are made by real people so the material is very authentic with a wide variety of voices and accents.
  • The site is well designed with a good search facility, so it's easy to find the kinds of products you are looking for.
  • There is a brief guideline on how to make a good product review here which students can use as a guide. Also some how to video clips that are handy.
  • There is a great potential here for real tasks as registered users can submit their own video reviews and even make money from them!! (I would be very careful about advising students to do this)
  • There's an embed code for each video so if you don't want students wandering around the site, or if you want to use only specific clips you can grab the embed code ( as I have above) and just add the clip to a blog, web page or word processing document.

How should we use this with students?
  • Get students to watch videos of a type of product and decide which one they would buy and why / which ones they wouldn't want to buy.
  • Get students to create their own product video and include all the relevant information (this could be done very easily using anything they have with them in class from shoes to stationary, phones bags etc.) If your students don't have access to a video camera, you could still get them to do this for each other in class as a kind of short presentation. You could even make it competitive and see who can best convince the class to buy their shoes or phone etc.
  • Get the students to watch 3 or 4 clips and make notes of key information about each product. They could then share this information in small groups and decide on the best product.
  • Give pairs or small groups of students a budget and a shopping list and ask them to select the best collection of products within their budget. They should then use the product information to justify their choices.
  • Ask the students to make notes of key word or phrases / sentence structures used when describing products
  • Get some pictures of products and get students to watch / listen to one clip and decide which product was being described.
  • Prepare a list of product features from a selection of videos, then get the students to watch the videos and match the features to the product.
  • Give students a selection of clips to watch and ask them to decide which was the best made clip. Ask them to decide why. (This is a good activity to start with if you intend to get students to make their own clips or presentations)
  • Have a class discussion about product review websites. Here's some possible discussion questions.
    • Have you ever used a site like this before?
    • Do you think the sites are useful?
    • Do you know of any good sites like this (in English or other languages)?
    • Are the reviews unbiased?
    • How much confidence do they have in such sites?
    • Why do people add videos to sites like these?
    • How do the sites make their money?
    • Why do they pay people to make video clips?
    • Would you make a review of a bad product? Why / Why not?
What I wasn't so sure about
  • Students can submit their own videos and get paid for them, but I would be very wary of encouraging this especially for younger students. Be sure to protect your students privacy and personal information and check on any terms of use before letting them register on this or any other website.
  • The site carries a lot of advertising so be wary of letting students click round all over the place. It may well be better to create your own page that only uses the clips you have selected embedded into the page (especially for younger students).
  • Students should be aware of the fact that not all the information given in the video is necessarily correct. These are just amateur video makers giving their opinion.

On the whole I think that sites like this are a really useful source of authentic materials, real language use and authentic real life tasks that can be useful to students beyond the classroom.

there are some things to be wary of when using them, but on the whole I think making students aware of the possible dangers, traps and pitfalls, is a valuable part of their education in itself, so I don't see this a reason not to use these sites.

Well I hope you find these tips useful, and please do add a comment if you have any other ideas for using product review websites, or if you have used them with your students.

Here's the URL of the site in case you missed it: http://www.expotv.com

Best

Nik Peachey

Your big carbon feet

Comment
I’ve just seen this new website called the Carbon Account. It’s sort of an ecology 2.0 social network. Once you register you fill in details about your household and your travels, the meter readings for your bills and the amount of miles you travel in your car etc and it will then calculate your carbon emissions for you.

You can see what the carbon emissions of other users are too and work at reducing your carbon emissions. You also have the option to network with other site users to offer support and encouragement, so the site is a bit like a weight watchers for the environmentally sound!

If you want to see how it works then take a look at the video on the site at:

The site also has some well written information on what carbon emissions are and how they are calculated. The site owners can also help set up special accounts for groups and give tips on reducing emissions.

This is a really good site to base a class project on.
  • Collecting and inputting the relevant data provides a lot of rich vocabulary work for language learners as well as having a meaningful outcome, and building awareness of the environment and our impact on it.
  • Students could monitor their carbon emissions over the course of a few months and see who can reduce them the most.
The only thing that does bother me about the site, is that it involves parting with quite a lot of detailed personal information, but they do seem to have a sound a very reassuring privacy policy. So why not give it a try with your students.

Hope it goes well

Best

Nik

Advertisement Project

Comment
Rollmio is an ingenious new website base around the idea of user produced advertisements! The site seems to be able to get commissions for online advertisements (they're only on their forth so far, but it is a start up site), then users come along, read the brief and produce and submit an advertisement (10 - 60 second video)that should fit the brief. The advertisement that the company likes best wins a prize ($500) and there are also some runner up prizes.


For more videos, rollmio.com

How to use this with students
This seems like the ideal site to build a project around and get your students creating and uploading their own advertisements. You could even try to win the prize for your school.
  • You might need to do some preparation work first discussing their favourite ads what they like about the etc.
  • Then you'll also need to do a bit of analysis of ads thinking about who the target of the ad is and the kind of profile of people the company wants to sell to etc.
  • You could also get your students to think about advertising techniques and genre of advertisements (story like, expert, celebrity endorsement etc)
  • Your students could then discuss and story board a possible advertisement and decide who will do what in the production of the advertisement.
  • Then if you have a camera try to get them to film, edit and upload the ads (If you have young learners make sure you get the parents permission before uploading anything)
  • You can see the latest creative brief here: http://rollmio.com/projects/brief/4
  • You could even use celtx with your students to help develop your project
The ads on the site aren't of a terrifically high / professional quality, they're mainly novel, so it isn't beyond the means of your students to compete with these.
  • If you don't have filming facilities / camera then you could just get your students to have a look at the ones that have been made in the archive and decide which they think is most effective / which will win.

What I liked about the site
  • Really attractive and user friendly interface
  • Really very authentic, motivating and a chance to make some money!!
  • It's free
  • It's easy to get an embed code so that you can add the videos to your own materials if you don't want your students to actually view the site.
What I wasn't so sure about
  • Still early days for this site, so it could be a huge success or by the time you read this it may have disappeared along with a great many other Web 2.0 type sites!!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and get to use it before that happens.

Best

Nik
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‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات project work. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات project work. إظهار كافة الرسائل

الجمعة، 20 فبراير 2009

Getting Video Tasks Online

I've been aware of 280Slides for some time now, but haven't really tried to use it much as I'm a very keen user of Keynote on my MAC, but this week I was looking around for ways to get video type lessons online and discovered what an incredibly easy and useful tool 280Slides is for this.


Basically 280Slides is an online tool for creating presentations. It works in a very simple way and has a very intuitive interface which is very quick to understand. It has a few basic themes and layouts and you can do all the usual things like adding text, shapes and images to your presentations.

The two key areas though that I like about 280Slides are:

1. It's really easy to import and embed video into you presentation. Just click on the 'Movies' icon add a search term. Find your video and double click it and there it is in the the presentation.

2. It's really easy to share the presentations online. Just click on the 'Share' icon and you get the options to publish to Slideshare, email as a PowerPoint or (and this is the one I like best) get an embed code for your blog or direct URL.



This is a quick easy lesson I created and you can compare the two last options below.

This is the embed version, just click the bottom right icon to see it full screen.


This is the direct link version: Led Zeppelin or the Beatles

How about using this with students
Well as you can see this is a great easy way create materials that exploit video.
  • You can create listening tasks with questions and comprehension questions.
  • You can get students to create their own video related projects by getting them to import video into the slides and write about them.
  • Great for digital narrative which combines video images and text
  • You could get students to import significant news clips and respond to them.
  • You can combine video into grammar presentations with videos that demonstrate grammar points
  • You could just use it to make your presentations and get them online
What I like about 280 Slides
  • Really quick easy to understand interface.
  • Works in the browser so no software to download or install.
  • Great way to make YouTube videos accessible without sending students to the site.
  • Easy enough for students to use.
  • Free and no sign of advertising.
  • The only information they ask for is email address.
  • Really quick way to get materials online without having to illegally download video or have server / web hosting space.
  • Really professional looking results.
  • Embedding the videos into sides with tasks might discourage students from wandering off to look at other YouTube videos.
  • Great to have an embed code for blogs.

What to watch out for
  • It's still in Beta and free and I can't see how anyone makes a living from the site, so they may start charging or advertising, but until then ...
  • If YouTube is blocked in your school, this probably won't solve the problem, though you can get students to access your video activities from home.
  • It doesn't have all the powers of a commercial product like PowerPoint, but how many people use those powers anyway?
Hope you find 280Slides useful.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:
التسميات: , ,

الاثنين، 15 ديسمبر 2008

Online Video: Authentic Genres

Over the past few years video sharing websites have become increasingly specialised, bringing about the development of different 'genres' of video sharing sites. As online video increasingly competes with TV this has also brought about the development of genres of 'micro shows'. These are complete episodes of shows that take place within 2 - 5 mins. This is an ideal length both for or 'digital native' students with their characteristically shorter attention span, but also for our English language students with their limited ability to cope with longer streams of authentic input. This more specialised content is also ideal for teachers developing materials for content and language integrated learning (CLIL)courses or for teachers who want to develop video projects.

Product Reviews
There are an increasing number of specialised video sharing websites like ExpoTV . This one enables users to create and share videos that review new products. This is a great source of authentic material and a great project for students who can create and upload their own video.
You can find some tips and suggestions for exploiting these sites at: Using Product Reviews

How to Videos
Video is a great way to teach people because you can actually see how they do things as well as listen to them . For the same reason it’s a very powerful tool for conveying the meaning of language. MonkeySee is a really useful website that contains lots of high quality short clips, showing how to do a variety of things from dancing, learning a musical instrument through to sales and marketing techniques and even building sandcastles!

The videos are user generated so anyone can create their own series and upload it.
Read more about how to use these videos here: Using 'How to' videos

Advertising projects
The Rollmio site was created to connect companies with creative amateur marketers. The site publicises information about companies that want web based video advertisements and anyone can then create an advertisement upload it to the site and try to win the contract. This can be a good insight for higher level students into how advertisements are created.

Here you can see some examples that a class of higher level English students created: Ad projects
To find suggestions on how to use this site with your students read: Advertisement Project


Sharing opinions
Big Think is a video sharing website that aims to create debate and the exchange of ideas. They invite very influential experts to record their opinions on a range of topics. Visitors to the site can watch these videos, vote to agree or disagree and also record their own video response. You can also set up your own debates on the site by recording your own opinion, either on the same topics as the experts or on a topic of your choice.

To read more about how to use this resource, go to: Video debating website


Micro soaps
The ability to share short video clips over the Internet through websites such as YouTube has led to the creations of various new ‘micro’ genre of TV programmes.

One very popular example is the 3 minute soap opera ‘ Lonely Girl 15’. This started a couple of years ago with a girl in the USA called ‘Bree’ talking to a webcam about here life. It soon attracted millions of viewers and it was discovered that the girl was a professional actress and the show was being produced by a small company.



There are now many series and a parallel programme based in the UK called Kate Modern. This kind of material, though at times sensitive carries a lot of potential for classroom exploitation. The programmes can be used to portray and contrast the youth culture of USA and UK as well as highlighting linguistic differences. You should be careful which episodes you choose though as some are unsuitable for younger learners.

To read more about thee micro soap operas go to: Iconic teen video

I hope that this posting has given you a look at some of the genres of online video that are available and how to use them. If you have a particular favourite genres please do leave a comment about it.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:
التسميات: , , ,

الثلاثاء، 9 سبتمبر 2008

Artificial Intelligence Chat bots and EFL ESL

Earlier this week I posted a short article to my Quick Shout blog about a new site called Virsona that enables teachers and students to develop their own AI ( Artificial Intelligence) chat bots.

Since then I have been trying the site a bit more, developing tutorials and thinking about how we can use it with our EFL ESL students.

To get an idea of what a 'chat bot' is, got to this page and start asking Abraham Lincoln some questions: http://www.virsona.com/ecchat.aspx?cvid=212
The chat bot has beeen programmed with lots of information about Abrham Lincoln and each time you enter a question the bot searches it's log and tries to match key words from your question with its log information.

This all sounds very compicated, but the site actually makes it quite simple to create your own bot which can either be yourself, a fictional character or a historical or real person.

The students can add information to their chat bot in a number of ways:
  • Write diary log entries
  • Email in the information
  • Add answers to random questions
  • Type in questions and answers
  • Ask the bot questions and then correct the answers.
Here are a couple of video tutorials showing how it is done:
So how do we use this with our EFL ESL students?
All of these ways can be very useful for generating meaningful language practice.

The virtual you - Get students to recreate themselves as a chat bot. They can upload a photograph of themselves and generate random questions to answer. You could also get them to write diary entries for a week or two. Then at the end of term you could get the students to share their chat bots and see which one is the most convincing. this is a noce way of combining a range of personal information questions with a learningg diary. You could also create one for yourself which students could interegate or get the URLs of your students' bots so that you could find out more about them.

Your virtual celebrity - You could ask students to do research on a favourite celebrity or person from history and then use the information they find to create a chat bot of that person. A number of these are already under development, though Lincoln is the only one open for you to chat with at present.
Grammar bot - You could get your students to create their own grammar bot with infformation they have learnt about various grammar points.

Vocabulary bot - Likewise you could try to get students to create a vocabulary bot that has definitions for the new vocabulary they are learning.

Topic expert - You could ask groups of students to create topic experts based around various general knowledge areas then they couldd work in teams to challenge each others' bots in a test of knowledge.

Interview Lincoln - Get your students to interview Lincoln and see what they can find out about him. See if they can decide if it is a real person answering them.

What I like about this site
  • It's free and obviously aimed at educationalists
  • I'm fascinated by AI and how it can be applied to language learning and language production so..
  • It's great that they have ma de it easy to create your own bot, with out having to know about the technology
  • I like the selection of random questions it can get students to answers (a task in itself)
  • Looks like it could develop into a novel way of sharing knowledge

What I'm not so sure about
  • The site is obviously still under development andd a few things don't always work (I had a few problems trying to upload questions and answers in the 'Teach' section
  • The site carries some advertising
  • Not sure about the ethics of creating bots of real people (not sure if i would want someone else putting words in my bots' mouth)
  • Bots aren't real people and sometimes they make stupid mistakes, but as long as our students are aware of this then we could maake it part of the challenge. It might well be worth telling your students about 'The Turing Test': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test a challenge designed in 1950 to try to trick people into thinking a machine was human.

Well for all the problems I still think this is a site that students can enjoy and which can encourage them to produce a lot of accurate language in text form (bots don't understand bad grammar or spelling).

Hope you enjoy it.

Related links:


Best

Nik Peachey
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الجمعة، 5 سبتمبر 2008

Photo Assignments for EFL ESL Students in Second Life

One of the things that I really like about Second Life is the rich visual imagery and the creativity that many of the builders there have put into designing their Islands. We can exploit this along with the Second Life snapshot tool to create stimulating projects for our students.

Here's a quick video showing you how to take a snapshot.



Here's another showing you how to access and use the snapshot controls so that you can get better camera angles.



So how do we use this with EFL ESL students?
We can use this in a number of ways to enhance writing activities.

Send a postcard activity - One of the options on the snapshot interface is to email the images we take to other people. When we do this we can add an email text telling them about the image or what we have found at that place etc. We can ask our students to imagine that this is a postcard to the class and to write about an imaginary holiday they are having.

Photo journalist - We can send our students on photojournalism assignments. These could be to report on events that they attend, or on islands or installations that we've asked them to investigate. The students can save the images to their hard drive and then either import them into a word processing document or create their own Second Life News blog about the events.



Photo stories - Students can work together using their avatars to create a sequence of images that tell a photo story. They can enhance the images by using a word processor to add dialogue bubbles to the images. This encourages them to collaborate both in class and while they are in Second Life.


Research Assignments - We can send each students to a different location in Second Life to do a research task. They can then send an email with an image and a report from that destination telling other students what is there and why they should visit it. In class the students can then read the reports and decide which place they want to visit.

Photo Fashion - You can ask students to work in pairs to dress up and take photographs of each other in different Second Life clothing. They can then use a word processor to import the images into a fashion column, describing the clothes etc. Again these could be published on a blog or printed up as a class project.

Working with students in Second Life needs care, so always be sure to set tasks and check your locations for suitability before sending them anywhere. If you are working with teens then be sure to use the Second Life Teen Grid.

To see more Second Life video tutorials go to my YouTube playlist

Related links:
The videos used in this posting were originally commissioned by The Consultants-E and are part of an introductory course for teachers they deliver on Edunation Island II and are used with their kind consent.

Best

Nik Peachey
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الثلاثاء، 27 مايو 2008

Using Product Reviews

Product review sites are becoming ever more popular on the internet, and why not after all? If you are going to spend money buying something, it's always a good idea to see what other people who bought that same product think of it.

ExpoTV is just that kind of site. It has a collection of, mostly home made, video clips made by ordinary people, mostly from North America, talking about the products they have bought. There is a huge collection of material here on a whole range of products from computer accessories to clothing, make up, cars, video games, children's toys and even trucks!

Here's an example product review. This one is of one of my favourite products, Apple's i-pod touch




What I liked about the site
  • The clips are reasonably short and download quite quickly.
  • It's free and you don't have to register unless you want to add comments or upload your own video.
  • The site is rich with the kinds of language and vocabulary that students find quite useful in their 'real lives' especially if they do have to buy things from websites or while traveling in an English speaking country.
  • The videos are made by real people so the material is very authentic with a wide variety of voices and accents.
  • The site is well designed with a good search facility, so it's easy to find the kinds of products you are looking for.
  • There is a brief guideline on how to make a good product review here which students can use as a guide. Also some how to video clips that are handy.
  • There is a great potential here for real tasks as registered users can submit their own video reviews and even make money from them!! (I would be very careful about advising students to do this)
  • There's an embed code for each video so if you don't want students wandering around the site, or if you want to use only specific clips you can grab the embed code ( as I have above) and just add the clip to a blog, web page or word processing document.

How should we use this with students?
  • Get students to watch videos of a type of product and decide which one they would buy and why / which ones they wouldn't want to buy.
  • Get students to create their own product video and include all the relevant information (this could be done very easily using anything they have with them in class from shoes to stationary, phones bags etc.) If your students don't have access to a video camera, you could still get them to do this for each other in class as a kind of short presentation. You could even make it competitive and see who can best convince the class to buy their shoes or phone etc.
  • Get the students to watch 3 or 4 clips and make notes of key information about each product. They could then share this information in small groups and decide on the best product.
  • Give pairs or small groups of students a budget and a shopping list and ask them to select the best collection of products within their budget. They should then use the product information to justify their choices.
  • Ask the students to make notes of key word or phrases / sentence structures used when describing products
  • Get some pictures of products and get students to watch / listen to one clip and decide which product was being described.
  • Prepare a list of product features from a selection of videos, then get the students to watch the videos and match the features to the product.
  • Give students a selection of clips to watch and ask them to decide which was the best made clip. Ask them to decide why. (This is a good activity to start with if you intend to get students to make their own clips or presentations)
  • Have a class discussion about product review websites. Here's some possible discussion questions.
    • Have you ever used a site like this before?
    • Do you think the sites are useful?
    • Do you know of any good sites like this (in English or other languages)?
    • Are the reviews unbiased?
    • How much confidence do they have in such sites?
    • Why do people add videos to sites like these?
    • How do the sites make their money?
    • Why do they pay people to make video clips?
    • Would you make a review of a bad product? Why / Why not?
What I wasn't so sure about
  • Students can submit their own videos and get paid for them, but I would be very wary of encouraging this especially for younger students. Be sure to protect your students privacy and personal information and check on any terms of use before letting them register on this or any other website.
  • The site carries a lot of advertising so be wary of letting students click round all over the place. It may well be better to create your own page that only uses the clips you have selected embedded into the page (especially for younger students).
  • Students should be aware of the fact that not all the information given in the video is necessarily correct. These are just amateur video makers giving their opinion.

On the whole I think that sites like this are a really useful source of authentic materials, real language use and authentic real life tasks that can be useful to students beyond the classroom.

there are some things to be wary of when using them, but on the whole I think making students aware of the possible dangers, traps and pitfalls, is a valuable part of their education in itself, so I don't see this a reason not to use these sites.

Well I hope you find these tips useful, and please do add a comment if you have any other ideas for using product review websites, or if you have used them with your students.

Here's the URL of the site in case you missed it: http://www.expotv.com

Best

Nik Peachey
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الجمعة، 18 أبريل 2008

Your big carbon feet

I’ve just seen this new website called the Carbon Account. It’s sort of an ecology 2.0 social network. Once you register you fill in details about your household and your travels, the meter readings for your bills and the amount of miles you travel in your car etc and it will then calculate your carbon emissions for you.

You can see what the carbon emissions of other users are too and work at reducing your carbon emissions. You also have the option to network with other site users to offer support and encouragement, so the site is a bit like a weight watchers for the environmentally sound!

If you want to see how it works then take a look at the video on the site at:

The site also has some well written information on what carbon emissions are and how they are calculated. The site owners can also help set up special accounts for groups and give tips on reducing emissions.

This is a really good site to base a class project on.
  • Collecting and inputting the relevant data provides a lot of rich vocabulary work for language learners as well as having a meaningful outcome, and building awareness of the environment and our impact on it.
  • Students could monitor their carbon emissions over the course of a few months and see who can reduce them the most.
The only thing that does bother me about the site, is that it involves parting with quite a lot of detailed personal information, but they do seem to have a sound a very reassuring privacy policy. So why not give it a try with your students.

Hope it goes well

Best

Nik
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الاثنين، 3 مارس 2008

Advertisement Project

Rollmio is an ingenious new website base around the idea of user produced advertisements! The site seems to be able to get commissions for online advertisements (they're only on their forth so far, but it is a start up site), then users come along, read the brief and produce and submit an advertisement (10 - 60 second video)that should fit the brief. The advertisement that the company likes best wins a prize ($500) and there are also some runner up prizes.


For more videos, rollmio.com

How to use this with students
This seems like the ideal site to build a project around and get your students creating and uploading their own advertisements. You could even try to win the prize for your school.
  • You might need to do some preparation work first discussing their favourite ads what they like about the etc.
  • Then you'll also need to do a bit of analysis of ads thinking about who the target of the ad is and the kind of profile of people the company wants to sell to etc.
  • You could also get your students to think about advertising techniques and genre of advertisements (story like, expert, celebrity endorsement etc)
  • Your students could then discuss and story board a possible advertisement and decide who will do what in the production of the advertisement.
  • Then if you have a camera try to get them to film, edit and upload the ads (If you have young learners make sure you get the parents permission before uploading anything)
  • You can see the latest creative brief here: http://rollmio.com/projects/brief/4
  • You could even use celtx with your students to help develop your project
The ads on the site aren't of a terrifically high / professional quality, they're mainly novel, so it isn't beyond the means of your students to compete with these.
  • If you don't have filming facilities / camera then you could just get your students to have a look at the ones that have been made in the archive and decide which they think is most effective / which will win.

What I liked about the site
  • Really attractive and user friendly interface
  • Really very authentic, motivating and a chance to make some money!!
  • It's free
  • It's easy to get an embed code so that you can add the videos to your own materials if you don't want your students to actually view the site.
What I wasn't so sure about
  • Still early days for this site, so it could be a huge success or by the time you read this it may have disappeared along with a great many other Web 2.0 type sites!!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and get to use it before that happens.

Best

Nik
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