Publishing 3.0 - A new model for independent educational publishing

My New Years resolution this year was to start work on a series of ebooks for iPads, e-readers and other digital devices. This has been my ambition since I published my first book Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers back in 2009, but I’ve never felt that the time, the technology or the market was at the right place.

Significant changes over the last couple of years though have led me to believe that now is the time to look at a new model of ELT publishing, at least for the realm of teacher development books.

The changes I mention above include

• A proliferation of increasingly low cost e-reading devices and tablets.
• The development of powerful free software and applications such as iBooks Author for the development of media rich ebooks.
• The combination of these applications with secure and reliable marketing platforms, such as Lulu and iBookStore.
• The development of crowd-funding platforms such as KickStarter and Indigogo.

I believe that the combination of these developments is now enabling individual teachers to write develop and launch their own products to the market on a commercially competitive basis with established publishers.

So why is this a good thing?
Well anyone who has ever approached a publisher with an idea for a book will know how difficult it can be to get it accepted. The established publishers are, by necessity, cautious about taking on new, innovative or risky projects. Producing and distributing paper-based books is a hugely expensive endeavor and in the case of teacher development books, the returns are likely to be small for both the publisher and the writer.

The changes I mention above, however, have the potential to liberate writers from the established publishing process and give them the freedom to develop their own projects and products independently.

• The proliferation of low cost mobile devices such as e-readers, tablets and iPads provides a really useful and accessible medium on which to publish teacher development materials. Instead of having your books at home on the bookshelf you can now carry them around with you on your device so they are on hand at the moment of need.
• These devices and the applications used to develop content for them are capable of providing a media rich experience with colour interactive images, audio, video and a range of interactive learning apps, none of which is possible in a traditional paper-based book.
• The combination of these applications with established secure marketing platforms means that writers with the commitment to see their projects through to completion can easily market them internationally and actually get a reasonable financial return on the work they put in.
• Crowd-funding platforms like KickStarter and Indigogo enable writers to raise the funds they need to develop good quality professional products that the market wants.

I’ve put the crowd-funding platform at the end of my list, but really it should be at the beginning, because crowd-funding doesn’t just supply the money to launch the product, it also acts as a market research tool to see if there really is a market for the product. If the people for whom the product is intended aren’t willing to invest in it to get it created, then it’s likely that there isn’t really a viable market for this product.

So this brings me back to where I started with my New Years resolution. I have launched my own crowd-funding project to try to create the first in a series of ebooks in a series that I intend to call The Digital Classroom. The first of these will focus on the use of online video as a tool for learning.

You can find out more about this project by following this link Digital Classrooms - Online Video or watching the video below.



If you think this is a product you would be interested in having them please do support it buy either buying and advance copy of the book or by sharing the link with others you think may be interested.

You can also get an idea of the kind of content the book will cover and even contribute your ideas for what the book should contain, using the crowd-sourcing questionnaire below. Just add your ideas and vote for the things you would most like included in the book. That way you can ensure that I produce the book that you need to help support and develop your teaching.


powered by tricider

You can also follow the project on Facebook by going to The Digital Classroom and clicking on 'Like'.

I hope you find the project interesting and that this post gets you started thinking about how you can produce your own book too.

Best
Nik Peachey

Video communication apps and mobile learning

One of the great things about mobile devices such as tablets, iPads and phones is that most modern devices have good quality cameras and microphones built in. This opens up a really wide range of potential for communication and speaking practice that used to be such a struggle to organise on older laptops and desktop computers.

App developers have also been quick to exploit the potential of this powerful tool and in this post I'd like to look at some of the tools that have been created and how they can be used for language development.

Mailvu for asynchronous messages

Mailvu has been a long time favourite of mine, mainly because the web based version is so easy to use and doesn't require any downloads. You just point your browser at: http://mailvu.com/ and as long as you have the Flash plugin installed on your computer you can start recording immediately. Mailvu also provides mobile apps for iOS, Android an Blackberry. These are easy to use and it allows you to send short spoken messages which don't require the viewer to have any specific software or to download large video files. They just click a link and watch your message. This kind of cross platform compatibility is really important if you are working in a BYOD environment where students could be coming to class with a wide range of devices.

EyeReport for picture in picture

EyeReport  puts an interesting twist on the video communication genre by adding the ability to record video on video. By this I mean that students can upload or record a video on their mobile device and then add a video commentary over the top explaining or commenting on what they see in the original video. This opens up a whole range of potential activities that we can get students doing. They could add commentary to sporting clips, give guided tours of places they have visited, explain processes or even make their own documentaries. Once students have completed their recording these can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or emailed directly from within the app.

CoachesEye for video annotation

CoachesEye is a similar app to EyeReport (though this one is no longer free) but is much more feature rich. Like EyeReport you can record video commentary over video, but with CoachesEye you can also add annotations and you can stop and control where you insert your comments into the video. This app was designed for coaches to give detailed feedback to athletes on their physical movements, but it's a great app to get students creating and talking about their own videos, and also a useful tool to use when observing teachers for training purposes.

Storytime for bedtime stories 

Storytime is another app which puts a new Twist on the video communication genre. It combines video conferencing with reading stories out loud. The app was designed to enable parents to read to their children from a distance and it contains a number of books you can choose to read and while you read you can discuss the books, ask questions and point to things on the page whilst chatting with the video window at the top. This is great for doing online tutoring with younger learners. There is quite a range of books from very basic and up and they are nicely illustrated.

Teleprompter for controlled speaking practice 

Teleprompter is an app that I wrote about a while back when it was still free (iPhone for Speaking Homework ). The app is what it says, it allows you to import text and then it scrolls through the text while creating a video of you reading it. This is great to get students doing controlled speaking practice and then watching and improving their speaking. You can set texts which include a range of sounds which they find difficult and then watch them together and help them to understand what elements of their pronunciation are causing problems.

Keek for video journals

Keek mixes web with mobile in the form of video journals. Users can post short messages of up to 35 seconds from their mobile or computer and these are published to the web or can be browsed through the app. This would be a great tool to use as a daily learning journal, but it's probably best used by adults or more responsible teens. It seems to be a very popular tool with teens in the USA and there is a wide range of content that students can browse through, some of which is not best suited to educational purposes, but as a concept this is quite a good app. If you prefer your students to be sheltered from this kind of popular culture app, then you can still take up the idea of the video learning journal and just get them to use their built in video camera app and post the messages to a Dropbox site.

Six3 for video messaging

Six3 is similar to MailVu and also compatible with most platforms, but it gives you the choice of recording private or public message and has an additional filter feature which can help to improve your appearance on the video. It's called Six3 because you have 63 seconds of recording time in each message. Like Mailvu, the messages are also sent via links through your email, but they can also be posted directly to Twitter or Facebook from within the app.

Skype for synchronous online tutoring

Skype has been around for a good while and was one of the first video based communication tools to break into the mainstream. It's being used by many online schools to deliver live online lesson from teachers to all parts of the globe. One of the great things about Skype, apart from the reliability, is that it keeps developing and adding new features. The recent addition of video messages that enable it to be used as an asynchronous tool will really help to widen its scope for use as a language development tool.


Built in camera app
With all these apps and the possibilities they offer, it can be easy to overlook the obvious. Most modern mobile device come with a built in video camera application and you can always use this to record and send video message. This has the advantage that messages are very safe from third party app providers and any possible security breaches, but sending the video clips to someone else often involves sending the whole clip via email which can be slow and require good connectivity.

For more ideas and activities for using video and webcams to develop languages see my posting 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Why use video communication?

• Well one of the best reasons to use these kinds of apps is to get students speaking. Speaking homework has always been particularly difficult for students, but now you can ask students to produce spoken homework which you can watch and assess.
• Video as a communication genre is likely to become increasingly important as a 21st century digital literacy, so it's important that our students have practice and are able to use this communication genre, just as they do with speaking on the telephone or writing emails.
• Video can draw students' attention to many of the paralinguistic features of communication that are hard to highlight in a crowded classroom.
• Enabling students to record themselves speaking and then to watch themselves can be very enlightening for students as they can then start to self assess their own performance and look for ways they can improve. It can also encourage some students to try harder, because they know that someone else might see the video.
• Video can be very engaging and can be played repeatedly so it gives students the chance to listen again and in more depth.
• Video communication can help teachers to build a stronger sense of connection with their students, especially with online course when you might never physically meet your students. Conveying some sense of your personality, sense of humour and character can be very difficult in written communications, so video has some really big advantages.
• Giving students 1 to 1 time and having the time to just sit down and spend a few moments listening to a single student without the noise of others around can be really difficult in the classroom, but having a short recorded video clip of our students can really enable us to focus on their specific strengths and weaknesses and enable us to give them some really personalised feedback.

Potential problems

• As with any kind of online communication, make sure your students know how to protect their privacy and also themselves from harassment. Be sure to have a transparent and open policy on any kind of harassment so students know what is likely to happen to anyone harassing and how to report harassment.
• If you are using video communications with younger students also make sure their parents know what you are doing and why you are doing it and get their approval (in writing if possible) and if possible get them involved too.
• Make students aware of the difference between poor quality speaking and poor quality audio. You don't want them to think they sound bad if the real problem is the recording quality and interference from background noise etc. Help your students to understand how to get he best quality results from whatever recording tools they have, by finding somewhere quiet to record and experimenting with the best distance from the microphone.
• Helping students to look their best on video will also help to boost their confidence. Getting the camera angle right and having the light coming from the right direction can also have a big impact on how students look, so helping with this can be part of the learning experience. There is a useful article here which may help: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/look-good-on-webcam/
• Always remember and remind students that anything they do or say on video can potentially be seen by other people for years and even centuries to come, so whenever one of these apps is used, encourage them to think about what they are doing and saying and keep in mind that it could be seen by people they know and people they might yet meet as well as strangers who they might never meet. It's important to remind students of how they want to be perceived.

I hope you enjoy these apps and that they help to get your students speaking. Please leave a comment if you have any favourite video communication apps that you use to get your students speaking.

Related links:

• Mix Images and Animation on Your Mobile 
• Peer editing in digital and mobile environments 
• iPhone for Speaking Homework 
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Create Books for the iPad
• Getting Learning out of the Classroom with Augmented Reality  
•  Augmented Reality and Web 3.0
• Creating texting dialogues for students

Best

Nik Peachey

Create Video Questionnaires

Intervue.me is a new website I have been using recently. It's another website that is based around the use of webcams. The site enables users to create questionnaires and then get the recipients of the questionnaire to leave video recorded answers. The site is very easy to use.

Register the go to 'My Dashboard' and click on 'Create New' to start your first questionnaire.


First you decide on the levels of privacy you want for the questionnaire and whether you want people to be able to leave anonymous answers or add comments to the answers.


Next you click on 'Start adding questions'.
You can type in your question and give more explanation below the question if you think that makes it clearer. You can add as many questions as you want. You'll also need to click on 'Edit title' so that you can give your questionnaire a name.


Once you have added all your questions you can just click on 'Share' or 'Invite' to either get a URL for your questionnaire or to email it to specific people.

Then once people receive the questionnaire they just click on the questions and record their answers using the webcam in their laptop.

To see all the videos you can just go to 'My Dashboard' and click on the 'Videos' tab.

Here are some example questionnaires I have created. Feel free to leave an answer to any of the questions.

• Blended learning
• How digital is your classroom?
• Mobile devices in the classroom

How to use Intervue.me with students

• Create comprehension check questions to go with reading homework so that students also do some speaking for homework.
• Create opinion polls for students to answer.
• Make action research questionnaires
• Play the alibi game and get students to explain where they were and what they were doing at particular points in time.
• Ask students about childhood memories.

What I like about Intervue.me

• It's very quick and easy to create questionnaires
• It's a great way to provide speaking practice for students.
  
• You can add more detail and explanation to the questions.
• Students get to practice their digital communication skills.
• Students will be able to watch and listen to their replies and rerecord them so this will focus them on accuracy.
• It can be more communicative and engaging than writing down answers as students can also see the other answers that have been recorded.
• You can create long questionnaires or very simple single question ones.

What I'm not so sure about.

• It could take time to get students feeling comfortable in front of the camera, so you might need to help them a little and get them to think about lighting and getting the correct distance from the camera.
• Be careful about enabling anonymous replies or comments as this could be abused.
• Students need a laptop with a reasonable quality microphone.

I hope you find Intervue.me useful and that your students get plenty of speaking practice.

Related links:

• Create a Video Q&A Booth
• So Ask Me a Question
• Create a Video Dictation Activity
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Teach Yourself to Teach with Tech
• Get your Students Listening and Interacting with Native Speakers

Best

Nik Peachey

Get your Students Listening and Interacting with Native Speakers

Listening in the EFL / ESL classroom can be a pretty dull business. Usually it consists of students all listening to the same thing at the same time and doing the same tasks. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you feel the urge to get away from the course book and get your students listening to and interacting with some real native speakers from the safety of their computer then why not check out some of the people on Vyou.com ?

I've already written about how you can set up your own Vyou Q&A video booth, but it's also well worth looking round some of the people who are already there and seeing if there are any your students would be interested in, as a lot of the people there a quite young and some are quite interesting and quirky and Vyou offers your students the opportunity not only to listen to them and hear a range of accents, but also to ask them questions, though the answers might take a while to come.

It's very simple to use. You just go to : and there you can either search through some of the featured people or you can click on channels at the top and look through the more topic related people.

Each person has their own video channel and you can either type in questions below the video or you can click on the questions on the right of the video to listen to the answers to questions that have already been asked.

Here are a few people your students might find interesting.

This one is a British guy called Jonny and he claims he will write a song about any subject that readers suggest. There a quite a few there already: http://vyou.com/Spontaneoussongs
This one is Loren Rochelle for North America. She works in 'Social Video seeding' (Yes that seems to a job these days). She answers questions about a wide range of things from the personal to the trivial: http://vyou.com/lorenrochelle

It's also worth checking out the channels.

If you and your students are more interested in literature then there is an ask the author channel where writers answer questions about literature and their books: http://vyou.com/channels/simonandschuster
If your students are more interested in music, EMI also has a channel where you can submit questions to some of their recording artists: http://vyou.com/channels/emi

So how can you exploit this with EFL / ESL students?

• Show students some of the people and get them to think of questions they would like to ask. Then get them to submit the questions (try to get them to submit questions to a few different people) then in the next lesson they can see if they have any answers and share the information they got from the answers (Also good for lessons on reported speech).
• Ask students to choose one person each and give them 5 - 10 minutes to discover as much information as possible about that person. They can then discuss and share the information in class.
• Collect some of the questions that have been asked and get students to think of possible answers, then watch and compare to their own answers and see how much they have in common with each person. Then get students to find the person they are most like.
• Get students to watch two different people and then compare and contrast their character and interests.
• Get students to think of one or two good questions and submit them to a range of people. Then in the next lesson students can check the answers and decide who they think gave the best answer.

What I like about this Vyou

• These are real people that students can interact with.
• The use of the looped introduction videos gives a real sense of presence and this can be much more motivating and engaging for students.
• There's a real wealth of listening materials with various accents on a range of topics.
• The answers are quite short so they aren't too demanding on students concentration despite being 'ungraded' and authentic.
• Students can listen multiple times.
• I've looked at quite a few channels and there doesn't seem to be anything inappropriate or offensive.

What I'm not so sure about

• Some of the channels allow for anonymous submission of questions, so students might be tempted to ask something inappropriate (though they are unlikely to get an answer.)
• It is possible that your students might stumble across something they might find offensive or some bad language, but I haven't found anything like this yet.

Well I hope you try Vyou.com and that your students find it engaging, entertaining and useful.

Related links:

• Create a Video Q&A Booth
• So Ask Me a Question
• Create a Video Dictation Activity
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Teach Yourself to Teach with Tech

Best

Nik Peachey

So Ask Me a Question

I recently spotted this very interesting site called Vyou.com which exploits video to create asynchronous conversations. I find it interesting because of the simple way it creates presence. As you can see below, it looks like the person (me in this case) is waiting ready for your question.

All visitors need to do is type a question into the text line below the video and the creator will get a message with the question and post a reply. You can try it if you wish by posting a question to me. I'm not sure yet how long it will take for me to answer though.



This is very quick and easy to set up. You just go to the site and register for free, then once your registration is validated you record two short video clips. One is the one you can see above and another for unanswered questions. As questions are answered they appear below the 'waiting' video.

It's also a bit like Twitter in that you can 'follow' people and build up a group of followers. These people all receive notification of any video responses posted.

I'm trying this out because I think it's a great way of getting students to speak to each other and ask you or each other questions. All you need is a webcam and a microphone.

How to use this with students

• You could set up your own grammar or vocabulary answers site and students could send you questions.
• You could get students to ask each other questions about a story.
• You could play animal, mineral or vegetable and each students has to ask question to see what you are thinking about.
• You could just get students asking and answering questions about their likes and dislikes etc.
• I think this would work particularly well for class exchanges with students from other classes or countries.

What I like about it

• It's free and very quick and simple to set up.
• There's a real feeling of presence and that someone is there waiting for your question.
• I can generate some real spoken interaction.
• It's a very simple idea made very effective.
• You can embed the video chat into your blog or site.
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Of course something like this is very much open to abuse, especially as it allows anonymous questions to be posted.
• The widget which I've embedded into my post is a bit big and it would be nice to have smaller sizes.
• A lot of the example conversations that have been created on the site are a bit adult in nature and certainly inappropriate for younger learners, so if you use it, be sure to use it with adults and embed it into a blog or site so that your students don't wander round the site.
• WebCams aren't generally very flattering, especially in a bad light, but you can always wear a big hat or dark glasses.

If you do give this a try, please do follow me and I'll reciprocate, as I'd like to find out a bit more about how this will work in practice. You can visit my profile on the site at: http://vyou.com/nikpeachey . There you will be able to see a better view of the full size widget.

I hope you find this interesting.

Related links:

• Quick Twitter Video Activity
  
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Animated Music Videos for EFL
• Creating multimedia stories
• Tutorial: Using Videos from YouTube
• Great Video Commenting Tool

Best

Nik Peachey

Cropping YouTube Videos to Create Activities

Using YouTube videos with students can be really great, but finding a video with the exact language you want and at a suitable length with too many other distractions around can be really difficult. That's why SafeShare.TV is so useful.

• SafeShare.TV is a tool that has two primary functions. The first is to enable you to share YouTube videos using a direct URL that frames the video without the advertising and other distracting features that might cause students to wander off into less suitable materials.
• The second and perhaps even more useful function of SafeShare.TV is that it enable you to crop the video clip so that only a particular part is shown. This is particularly useful when you want to build activities or tasks around clips that focus students on particular linguistic features.

How to use SafeShare.TV
First find a YouTube clip that has a section that you would like to use. I chose this one from ‘Room with a View’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tehft3GDw6k. At 9 mins it's quite long so I just wanted to use a few sections.

Copy the URL and then go to: http://www.safeshare.tv/. Paste the link into the field then click on ‘Generate safe link’.
This will create a new link to the video which you can then use with your students to show them the clip.
When the students open the link they will only see the single video clip with it’s title, like the example below.

If you want to crop the clip so that only a short part of it shows, then generate your safe URL and then click on the link that says 'Do you want to only share a part of the video? click to crop.' This will open a small video viewer. Click the video to watch it, then click on ‘Set Start’ at the beginning of the segment you want students to see. Watch the segment and click ‘Set End’ at the end of the segment. Now click ‘OK’

Once you have clicked 'OK' your safe link will be adapted to only show the section of the video you have selected. You can then either copy the link to share with students or share it through a variety of social networking mediums.


Here's a quick video tutorial showing how to do this.


You can download this video here or download a copy for i-Touch or i-Phone here

How can we use this with students?
Clipping videos makes it much easier for us to create activities and tasks that focus on specific areas of the video clip without having to watch the whole thing.

• You can select example phrases to show the use of language in context, such as a telephone call or a scene that shows someone booking into a hotel etc.
  Here’s an example: Booking a hotel room This was trimmed from a much longer clip on YouTube
  
• You can show students the beginning to a clip and ask them to predict what’s ‘going to’ happen next.
  
  Here are two examples:
  1. What's going to happen?
  2. What's going to happen?
  

• You can show the beginning and end of a clip and ask students to predict what ‘has happened’ in between.
  
  Example:
  They watch this one
  Then this one
  

• You can show students a number of sections from the same clip and ask them to order them either by using linguistic or visual clues and explain their rationale.
  
  Here are 5 clips for you to try to order:
  Clip 1
  Clip 2
  Clip 3
  Clip 4
  Clip 5
  

• You can show each student in a group a different sections of the clip (like the 5 sections above) and then ask them to work together to describe the part they watched and put the different sections into the correct order as a group.
• You can use the sections to focus on the use of specific structures, like this one for ‘should have’ Should have clip or this one for the use of 3rd conditional 3rd conditional clip
  
• At the end of these types of activities you can show them the complete clip. http://www.safeshare.tv/v/Tehft3GDw6k
  

What I like about it

• It’s free and easy to use
• It gets your students right to the part of the video you want them to see
• It allows you to easily split videos into shorter clips
• there’s a simple ‘bookmarklet’ that you can drag to your favourites bar, then whenever you find a YouTube clip your want to use you just click on it to get the SafeShare.TV link.

What I’m not so sure about

• Sometimes it doesn’t work on my MAC
• It would be great to have an embed code as well as a URL

Well those are some suggestions to get you started cropping YouTube videos. I hope you find them useful.

You can find 25 more video related activities for EFL and ESL students here.

Related links:

• Quick Twitter Video Activity
  
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Animated Music Videos for EFL
• Creating multimedia stories
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Tutorial: Using Videos from YouTube
• Great Video Commenting Tool

Best

Nik Peachey

20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students

Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students.

Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities.

MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email.
EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version.
Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication.
Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee.

20 WebCam Activities

1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.


2. Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learned each day and you could then respond. The videos would form a good learning record and students will be able to look back at them later and see how they have improved - quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.



3. Class survey - Action research - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.

 They could also create their own questions and send them to each other, then feedback in class.

4. The witness - Show half of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to record a video statement giving their account of what happened in the first person. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip together in class and you can see how well they did and what they missed.

 Here's an example bank robbery scene

• Bank robbery - The Young Ones - BBC comedy


5. Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a web page or blog as a class poetry collection.


6. Video twitter - Using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.


7. Text and video error correction - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.


8. Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.


9. Tip of the day - Send you students a learning tip each day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended website etc.(The URL for the website would appear in the text part of the message below the video.)

10. Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.


11. Vocabulary record / word of the day - You could ask your students to create a video to record the words and example sentences. You could also do something like this yourself as a kind of 'Word of the Day' channel.


12. News Reports - Ask students to read the news ( in English or their own first language) and then produce a video news report on one of the main stories that they are interested in.
 They could also create their own local or school video news channel for other students to subscribe to.

13. Present continuous (sound on or off) - You can record video clips to demonstrate present continuous sentences. You can do this with sound on or with sound off and the students can guess the sentence
.

14. Questions for response - You could set up clips with questions and ask your students to respond online. They could also set up a sequence of their own questions for other students to respond to.


15. Guess the object - You or students could record a description of and object and viewers have to listen and guess what the object is. Getting students to create these clips will help them to be concise and really identify the key concepts behind describing objects.


16. Sales pitch - A variation on the idea above is to ask students to produce a video trying to convince users to buy a particular object. Again this helps them to identify key concepts, gives them practice with using language of persuasion and it may well help them to push for faster speaking speeds and better fluency.


17. Moods - You can create video clips of yourself or your students expressing different moods. This can help them to learn the vocabulary of the moods, but you could also use it to get students to predict the cause of the mood ( and practice present perfect; "He's angry because he has just been made redundant." etc.)

18. Live tutoring support - Video conferencing is an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.


19. Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
 The interview doesn't have to be done 'live' it could also be done through a series of email video messages sent to the interviewee.You can try it here by watching this video and then clicking reply.

20. Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to videocast your lesson or presentation to a group of distance learners.


I hope you find these suggestions useful and manage to use some of them with your students. Do drop me a line if you have other recommendations for useful video conferencing tools or activities. You can find more video related activities for EFL ESL here.

Related links:

• Very Easy Video Conferencing
• Online Video: As Communication
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Microblogging for EFL with Plurk
• Great Video Commenting Tool
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages

External links:

• Reach Out and Chat With Someone-Virtually!

Best

Nik Peachey

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:

• Online Video: For Language Development
• Online Video: As Communication
• Online Video: As Knowledge Resource
• Online Video: Authentic Genres
• 15 + Video related activities for students
• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Create a YouTube Carousel

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: What does it have to offer teachers and learners?

This series of postings are the result of a training presentation I was asked to deliver for Moroccan teachers of English in Kinitra on 15th December 08.

To prepare the session I looked back at many of the postings from my blogs over the last 18 months and thought about some of the changes that have been taking place in the way online video sharing has developed.

I've split the materials from the session into four sections.

• Online Video: For Language Development
• Online Video: As Communication
• Online Video: As Knowledge Resource
• Online Video: Authentic Genres

These are by no means conclusive. With the spread of broadband access the potential for education and for language teaching and development and autonomous teacher development is huge, but still as yet largely under exploited as the discussion that followed my session highlighted.

Some of the potential problems we highlighted were:

• Inappropriate content
• Dead links
• Teacher preparation time
• Blocked sites
• Lack of connectivity

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading this series of postings, which are in main part a summary of my work in this area over the last 18 months, and that they give some insight into some of the potential and a few of the ways we can overcome the problems. If you have experienced other problems, by all means leave a comment.

Related links:

• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Update on the Education Clip Library

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: As Knowledge Resource

Since the birth of YouTube, the web has seen huge growth in the availability and quality of user generated online video. With just a simple webcam, or a digital camera or camcorder it is now possible for teachers and students to create and share their knowledge and experience of a vast range of topics. It's also possible for them to access a global pool of knowledge and experience from cultures all over the world.

YouTube
YouTube was originally set up as an online dating site, but has become one of the biggest user created video libraries in the world. With quite literally millions of video clips, it is a fantastic resource for materials and information. You can find anything there. One of the biggest problems though is that you can find anything there!!!

Apart from being a place to find and store your own videos, YouTube also offers some editing features; You can add annotations, change the sound track and also create your own private or public channel.

• Read an article on Using Videos from YouTube
• Watch a video showing How to embed video from YouTube into web pages
• Download instructions as PDF
• I created my own channel to share my educational videos. Nik Peachey

TeacherTube
In an attempt to make video sharing safer for teachers, students and educational establishments, Teacher Tube was created. This is a site where any teacher can create their own account and upload their own videos. It’s also a great place to find educational videos for teacher development.
If you create your own channel and add the video you want to use with your students, you can choose to keep it private, so that only people you invite can see the videos.
TeacherTube has the advantage that you can also upload support materials, worksheet and presentations for each video that your students or trainee teachers can download.

• This is my TeacherTube channel where I share the video materials that I create.
• Here you can find a review of TeacherTube with more detailed information and some recommended videos to watch to help you use it.

Video sharing for young learners
Using online video with young learners can be difficult, but Totlol can really help you. The content for the site is selected by educators especially for use in education with young learners. The community of registered users ensures that only suitable and useful videos are included and makes sure the service isn’t abused. This is also a great site to recommend to parents who what to help their children study.
Read this article to find out more: Video sharing for young learners

Downloading Online Video
Because of the many problems associated with using online video sharing resources, it can be really useful to download the clip to your own computer. This can help you in a number of ways:
It stops your students wandering around sites and finding unsuitable materials

• You don’t need to worry about the Internet connection
• You don’t need to worry that the clip may get moved
• You can build the videos into other materials
• You can edit the videos

There are a number of online converters which enable you to copy in the link to a Youtube video, choose a suitable format and then download it to your computer hard drive. One reliable one is http://vixy.net/


Another useful tool for this is idesktop.tv
You can use idesktopTV to search for videos across a wide range of video sharing platforms. You can then either email a link to someone or download the video in a range of different formats:


Here you can read a more in depth review of idesktop TV: Downloading Online video

Video Clips for Teaching English
Creating your own video material is great, but having someone do it for you is even better. Jamie Keddie runs a great site with regularly published Lesson plans based on video clips from YouTube.
Read more about Video Clips for teaching English

I hope this posting has given you some insight into the wealth of what's available and how to overcome some of the problems involved in exploiting these materials.

Related links:

• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Update on the Education Clip Library

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Video: As Communication

Over the past couple of years online video communication has been transformed, not only price and quality, but in ease of use and accessibility. This tool has great potential for extending the reaches of our classroom and opening access to much better support for distance learners.

Video conferencing
Video conferencing was once a very difficult and expensive activity that required specific software, hardware and in many cases an expensive account with a service provider. You can now do video conferencing for free using software like Skype or free web-based services like Tokbox

Tokbox doesn’t require any downloads. You just create a free account and then star connecting with other users. You can do this by sending them a link to a conference.
Using Tokbox you can:

• Make live (synchronous) video calls from your computer either to one person or a small group.
• Record video messages (asynchronous) and send the by email
• Create a series of public broadcasts that anyone can access.

Here is a video which shows you How to use Tokbox
Here you can find some Teaching suggestions for using Tokbox with students:


Sending Video Greetings
Bubble Joy is a website that enables you to create short video greetings and then email them to people. All you need is a webcam with a microphone. The service is free and very quick and easy to use.

Here you can find some suggestions for teaching ideas and some instructions for how to make this work on your computer: Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students


Annotating the web
The bubble comment site enables you to create and share a brief 90 second commentary of a website. You can use this to get students talking about and sharing their favourite sites.

To find out more about using this tool go to: Great Video Commenting Tool


Video Microblogging
Video microblogging is a way of creating your own short video broadcasts. The first such site to enable this was 12 Seconds TV. The idea behind the site is that you create a short 12 second long video clip using your webcam. Other people can then subscribe to your channel and watch your video clips. It’s often used among friends to keep each other up to date on what they are doing, but it does have a range of uses for the EFL classroom.

 Here you can read about ways to use ‘microblogging’ with your students to create digital narrative, create vocabulary records and even practice verb forms: 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL

• You can see some of my examples here: http://12seconds.tv/channel/nikpeachey
• Here’s an online activity I created for students: Create a Video Vocabulary Record

I hope this gives you a few ideas and hints for how to use online video communication tools and by all means leave comments below if your own favourites haven't been mentioned here.

Related links:

• Find out about free video editing software
• YouTube for IWBs with PicLens
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Update on the Education Clip Library

Best

Nik Peachey