Creating social phrasebooks with Phraseum

I spend a lot of time looking at different web-based tools and apps and thinking about if and how they can be used for learning. Sometimes it takes some thought and at other times it’s really obvious. With Phraseum it was instantly obvious that this was a really great tool for learning.

Phraseum allows you to collect words, phrases and sentences from anywhere on the web while you you browse and organise them into social phrasebooks.

Phraseum is a browser-based tool which can be activated from your browser toolbar. Simply create an account and then drag the ‘Clipping button’ bookmarklet to your favourites bar on your browser.

Once that’s done you can just collect any words or phrases that you find online by highlighting them and then clicking on the bookmarklet. This opens up a window where you can add tags to the phrase and add your own private notes and annotations. The tags could be a definition, translation, part of speech or something about the context in which it could be used. You can then save the phrase into one of your phrasebooks. The phrases and phrasebooks can be private or they can be made public and so shared with others.

If you want to include specific words or phrases from a word document or PDF, you can also just type in the words or phrases you want to include in your phrasebooks, but if you save them from the web then Phraseum also stores a link back to the original source, so you can go back and see how the word or phrase is used in context. You can also get a link from the phrase to a translation from Google Translate.

Phraseum is social, so you can share phrases and phrasebooks with anyone else on the site and follow other people if you like the kinds of things they are saving and sharing. You can also click on any of the tags on your phrase to find other related words or phrases which have been saved by other users and add those to your own collection.

If you use social media with your students you can post the phrases you save through various social media channels so this is a great way to feed information and activities into something like a Facebook group or page or a Twitter feed that you use with students.

All of the entries you make to Phraseum can be edited and changed, so students can always add additional tags, change them and add the same entry to multiple phrasebooks.

Phraseum also enables you to follow people in a similar way to Twitter or Pinterest. If you follow people you can see their public phrasebooks and keep up-to-date with what they are saving.

This is really useful if you are using it with students, as by following them you can easily monitor their work and use the comments feature if you need to help, support or encourage your students.

Here are a few examples of phrasebooks I've created:

• A collection of business related collocations
• Quotes on education
• Words related to politics

How to use Phraseum with students

• You could get started just by creating a few of your own useful phrasebooks and sharing them with your students.
• If you like to pre-teach vocabulary, a good way to do this would be to create a vocabulary phrasebook from a particular online article you would like your students to read. They can look at the phrasebook before they read and check they understand the vocabulary, or use it as a reference while or after they read.
• You could also collect a phrasebook with a collections of more random words and phrases and see if the students can predict the genre or kind of text the phrases came from.
• You can collect phrases into a phrasebook and ask students to suggest appropriate tags to add.
• If you train your students to use Phraseum then they can start using it to create phrasebooks while they read. They can sort new words into specific groups. They could be grouped according to the source or topic or they could group words according to word classification such as parts of speech or types of collocation.
• You can get students to share phrasebooks and crosscheck so that they share vocabulary and check that they have similar definitions or translations of the words.
• You can send students on treasure hunts for specific things, for example searching for business related collocations. If they use this as the tag they will then be able to share their results together (any tag you click on shows you all other words and phrases which share that same tag).
• Get students to use the phrasebooks to revise and review their vocabulary.

What I like about Phraseum

• I love that it works in the browser tool bar. This makes it really easy and quick to access at any time you are online.
• I really like the social aspect too. Being able to share and compare phrasebooks with other people is really useful.
• It’s great that it makes it easy for students to go back to the source of the word or phrase.
• Saving phrases really encourages students to think about words within lexical chunks rather than as independent entities.
• Phraseum can be used in multiple languages.
• It’s free.

I think this is a great tool to support more of a lexical approach to online learning. It can also support students digital literacy and study skills. I hope you and your students find Phraseum useful. Be sure to share in the comments any ideas you have for using it with your students.

Related links:

• Get Students Checking Grammar and Collocation 
• How I use social media for my professional development  
• Two Contrasting Views of Educational Technology 
• Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why
• Developing your digital study skills

Best

Nik Peachey

Using Wise Quotes with EFL ESL Students

I've always found wise (and sometimes not so wise) quotes really useful, both within the classroom with students and as a way of introducing a topic when writing materials. I've used lots of different websites to find quotes over the years, but iWise is certainly about to become my new favourite as it seems to have taken wise quotes to a new level.

You can search for quotes by keyword, look at quotes of the day, browse quotes by topic or just click for a random quote.


That isn't all, iWise is compatible with Twitter and allows you to re-tweet quotes or subscribe to and follow tweet feeds from your favourite sources of wisdom.


If you decide to search by topic etc, it even pulls in tweets from Twitter too.


So how about some quote activities with our EFL ESL students?

Here are some suggestions:

• Get students to find a random quote and translate it into their own language or find a parallel quote in their own L1.
• Collect 8 - 10 quotes on a similar topic and get students to discus them and see which ones they prefer / most agree with.
• Get 8 - 10 quotes and cut them in half to create a matching activity. Get your students to match the two halves of each quote.
• Get you students to match the quotes to the writer of the quote.
• Give your students a list of 6 - 8 topics and ask them to find their favourite quote on each topic, then compare them in class and discus / have a class vote on which is the best (students should try to convince others in the class that theirs is the best quote)
• Get two+ quotes on the same topic. Print them up and put them around the class get the students to stand by the one they most like / agree with and discus why.
• Choose 2 -3 people and get your students to find their best quotes, then compare that quotes and try to decide which of the people is the wisest.
• Give the first part of some quotes to your students and see if your students can write an ending to it.
• Find some quotes about someone and see if the students can guess who they are about.
• Use a single quote at the start of each lesson to lead in to the theme of the lesson.
• Use a single quote at the start of each lesson as a warmer and ask students if they agree / disagree with the quote. They could give it marks out of ten too. Keep a league of favourite quotes.
  

Why do I like it?

• It's free and really simple (but also quite complex)
• Some amazing features that really take advantage some Web 2.0 technology
• Lots of fast and varied ways to access the quotes
• There are loads of quotes from a real range of sources
• There is an iPhone ap which can enable you to get all this information via your iPhone or iPod Touch so great for mobile learners

What I'm not so sure about

• The site is so dynamic that you can see then loose quotes pretty quickly if you are just browsing.
• Some quotes can be a little abstract!
  
• The site is free, but the ap isn't, but it is very cheap (59p in UK). Here's a video showing how you can use it.

NB: I have bought the ap, but haven't tried it yet so this is NOT and endorsement of the ap.

I hope you enjoy iWise and the ideas here. Please leave a comment if you have any other favourite quote sites or suggestions for how you have used quotes with students.

Here you can find more online reading activities for EFL ESL students

Related links:

• Get the News Through Images
  
• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
  
• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Exploiting Travel Images
• Art Photography as a Basis for Language Activities
• Create Image Books
• A Picture's worth
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey

Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students

For a long time now I've really admired and been fascinated by the work of AmanitaDesign. They have a really unique approach and I love the way they blend photographic textures with cartoon images.

I also find their games quite addictive and that's I quality I always look for when trying to find stimulating materials for students, so I've been looking at how these games could used for language development.

The two games I've chosen for this posting are Samorost 1 and Samorost 2

Samorost 1 is based on the scenario of an asteroid heading towards a planet. The player has to click various elements of the screen and find out how to help Samorost change the direction of the asteroid and save his planet.
In Samorost 2, Somorost's dog is stolen by aliens and the player has to help Samorost rescue the dog.


So why use these games with EFL ESL students

• These games are fascinating and very engaging.
• They are quite mentally challenging and help students to develop analytical and critical thinking skills.
• They are beautifully designed and should stimulate your students imagination
• They are based around strong narratives
• They really are a lot of fun to play and discover
• Online games are a significant part of our younger students' culture
  

So how can we use these games with our EFL ESL students?
Here are a few suggestions to get your students developing their speaking, reading and writing skills.

• Tell the story - Split your class into A and B students. Get all the As to play one game and all the Bs to play another. as they work through the games they should keep notes of what happens and what they try to do to find their way through the game. Once they have finished the game pair one A student up with one B student and ask them to retell the story as if they were Samorost. Once the students have told their stories they can change over games and see if they can work their way through the game by remembering the narrative that their partner told them.

• Write the instructions - Split your students in to As and Bs as above and get your student to work their way through the games and write instructions for how to complete each level. They should then give their instructions to their partner and see if their partner can use the instructions to find their way through the game.

• Write a review of the game - You could ask your students to write a review of one of the games. You could collect these together with reviews of other games and publish them as a small booklet.

• Following instructions - As a reading exercise you could print up the 'walk through' instructions on how to complete the games and see if students can read them and work through all the levels.

• You can find a walkthrough for Samorost 1 here
• You can find a walkthrough for Samorost 2 here
  
  You could use the walkthrough instructions from the first game as a model and get the students to write a walkthrough for the second game.
  
  You can find lots more links to games and their walkthrough instructions here at Games Online
  

• Write the story - You could get your students to play one of the games and then write the story. They could write it as a news report and even use a video camera or web cam to create a news broadcast.

What I'm not so sure about

• Students can get a bit excited and carried away and then they forget to use English
• The games are actually quite challenging and students may well get stuck and frustrated. If this happens you can either let them stop and get them to end the story at that place in the game, or you can give them the walkthrough sheets to help.

Well I hope you enjoy these games as much as I do. If nothing else, they are a visual treat.

Related links:

• Exploiting two computer-based RPGs
• Games With a Purpose and a Social Network
• 3B Village 3D browser
• Create your own game
• Looking at There.com

Activities for students:

• The Samorost Game Challenge
• Take a Quiz Adventure Journey

Best

Nik Peachey

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:

• Teaching your chat bot
• Testing your chat bot

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:

• AI and Chat Bots for EFL ESL
• Video conferencing for EFL
• A Virtual World for Facebook Users
• Make your own chat room

Best

Nik Peachey

Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL

I've just discovered Wordle, which is a really useful site for creating word clouds. The word clouds are created by entering either a text, URL or del.icio.us user name into a field. The site then generates a word cloud based on the frequency of key words in the text or webpage.

Here's what a word cloud based on the URL of this blog looks like.

The word clouds are really easy to create and can be printed up for classroom use or saved to a gallery on line. To see how this is done watch the tutorial movie below.

• How to create a Wordle word cloud
• You can download a higher quality Quicktime version here (Right click and the 'Save as')
• Or download for i-pod / i-Tunes here
  

How to use this with EFL ESL students
This is a wonderful flexible tool to use with students.

• Revision of texts - You can paste in short texts that your students have studied recently. Show them the word cloud and see if they can remember what the text was about and how the words were used within the text. You can build up a bank of word clouds over a semester and pull them out at random to get students to recall the texts they have studied and the key vocabulary in them. You could also see if they could rewrite or reconstruct the text based on the word cloud.

• Prediction - You can create word clouds of texts before the students read or listen and ask them to make predictions about the content of the text based on the word cloud. They could also check any new words from the word cloud that they are unsure of before they read or listen.

• Dialogue reconstruction - You can create a word cloud of a dialogue students are studying and use it as a prompt to remember or reconstruct the dialogue.

• Short poems / Haiku - You can generate a word cloud from a short poem or Haiku, then ask students to create their own work based on the word cloud. They could then see how close they came to the original.
  
  

• Text comparison - You can create word clouds from a number text genres (news article, poem, story, advertisement, dialogue etc.) and then see if the students can decide which genre each is from and why. You could also do this with a small collection of poems short stories or articles. Then students could read the complete texts and match them to the word clouds. Here are two poems. One is from Shakespeare and the other is from Robert Frost. Try to decide which one is from Shakespeare. How did you know?
  
  
  

• Personal information - You could get your students to each create a text about themselves and then turn it into a word cloud. You could them put the clouds up around the class and see if the students could identify each other from the cloud. They could exchange clouds and use them to introduce each other.

• Topic research tasks - You can create a word cloud based around a topic you want students to research. You could use a page from Wikipedia to do this, then use it to find out what students already know about the topic by asking what they think the relevance of each of the word is to the overall topic. They could then go to Wikipedia and find out more. Then report back on their findings using the key words as prompts. Here's an example I created by cutting and pasting the intro text on Cairo
  
  

• Learner training - This is a good tool for students to use regularly to help themselves. They can regularly make copies of the texts they study and pin them up to revise them or keep them in their gallery on the site. They could even create word clouds of their study notes to help them revise.

What I like about it

• It's free, quick and very easy.
• You don't need to register or part with an email address so it's a low risk site to get students using.
• The word clouds are very attractive and will stimulate more visual learners.
• Having key word prompts is a great way to support more fluent language production, but avoids having students just reading texts.
• It's nice that the students or you can customise the design and choose colours and fonts that they like.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Would be nice to have a more effective embed code for blogs (There is one, but it's not very effective) I've used a work around to embed these ones.
• Saving the word clouds as PDF is possible, but again a bit tricky unless you have a MAC (That's another good reason for getting one)

I've really enjoyed trying out this site and creating word clouds. Hope you do to. I'm sure the list of suggestions above is by no means exhaustive, so if you have any ideas for how to use this with your EFL ESL or other students, by all means post a comment and share your ideas.

Related links:

• Prompting reading speeds
• Animating vocabulary
• Interactive multiple choice activities
• Picture phrases

Activities for students:

• Learn Some Cliches
• Using Word Clouds to Remember Words
• Improve Your Vocabulary and Make Friends

Best

Nik Peachey

Microblogging for EFL with Plurk

Well I never thought I'd say this, but I've become a fan of microblogging! I have to say that it's mainly because of Plurk. When I first saw Twitter some time back I couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. I had a look at a few 'twitterers' sharing such information as what they had for lunch or that they were washing their hair and decided there are levels of detail at which information stops being informative - if you know what I mean.

Anyway, as the Twitter phenomenon continued to grow and other players joined the market I decided to give it another try. At the beginning of June I started a Twitter vs Plurk comparison. Now almost 6 weeks later, I have to say that for me Plurk has come out as a clear winner. Watch this demo to see why.

Here's a quick demo of Plurk and some of the features.

• To view the demo in a new window click here (2.7Mb)
• Download the demo as Quicktime movie (4Mb)
• Download the movie for i-pod (5Mb)

What I like about microblogging

• One problem that I constantly have is the amount of information and new things I find that I'd like to share but just don't have time to research and write about. What I have found over the last few weeks is that mircoblogging allows me to share this information, admittedly with less depth, but I've been able to share links to resources that people might find useful, but which I don't have the time to explore in depth.
  
• See my Plurk line here if you'd like to check out the sites I don't have time to write about: http://www.plurk.com/user/NikPeachey
  

What I like about Plurk

• For me the best Plurk feature is the ability to embed video from YouTube and images into the Plurk. This enable users to watch the clip or image without leaving the Plurk interface.
• I also really like the horizontal time line and the way you can scroll back through time lines and thread in comments. Threaded discussion can often become very disjointed and hard to follow on Twitter, but Plurk makes it much clearer which comments are related.
• I like the distinction between friends and fans (friends Plurks can also appear on your line, whereas fans just subscribe to your feed)
• I like the sense of accumulating 'karma' as you develop your plurk presence.
• I love the Plurk widget (you can see it embedded towards the bottom of the right hand column on this page).
• I really like that Plurk gives a choice of verbs for the message
  

So how about using microblogging with EFL studnts
As a teacher you could use microblogging to:

• Share resources and links to useful websites or videos (they open in the interface so students don't have to search around YouTube for them.
• Send out prompts and reminders to students about assignments and due dates.
• You could just use the social aspect to share a bit of what you do each day with them
• Send students images to comment on / describe
  
• Send out words and ask students to respond with a definition.
• Create single sentence assignments that students respond to wit single sentences.
• Create sentences for the students to correct.
• Create a collaborative story. You start the story with one line and each student has to add another using the response feature.
  

Your students could use microblogging to:

• Create a learner diary, recording briefly their language learning activities and insights through the day.
• Ask questions to the groups and get support with new words they find or things they don't understand.
• Post a short sentence each day using a different one of the verbs in the Plurk line
• Share good websites etc.
• Share a little of their world and what they do when they aren't in class.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• It's really hard for a competitor like Plurk to break into a market that Twitter almost invented, so despite the fact that I use Plurk more often and it seems to me a much better product, I've got far more followers on Twitter than I have on Plurk, so the audience potential is much greater with Twitter.
• As ever privacy is something you need to be careful of, and I've found that a few people who have requested friendship only do so to 'spam' my time line. Though that's easy to sort out and stop.

Well which ever you use, whether it's Twitter, Plurk or something else I hope you enjoy your microblogging experience.

Drop me a line if you know of other alternatives, or if you have used these microblogging applications in other ways. As always you comments are welcome (though moderated!).

Best

Nik Peachey

Related links:
See Wikipedia's definition of microblogging
See My Plurk microblog
See My Twitter microblog
See My Plurk demo video on YouTube and grab an embed code.