Crowdsourcing Knowledge with Students

Over the last few weeks I have been playing with a very simple brainstorming and voting website called tricider. The great thing about tricider is that it is incredibly quick and simple to use, and yet it enables users to collect information and opinions from all over the web in a very easily digestible and powerful way.

It's very easy to create a tricider topic or question and you don't even need to register, just type your topic or question into the field.


You can also add a bit more detail and instructions to guide your students.

After you have saved the description, you or your students can start adding solutions.

Once there are some solutions added it's easy to either vote for them or add arguments for or against, using the + or - symbols.


Once you have set up your page you can add your email so that you get notifications when ever anyone adds something new or votes. You can also get a URL to edit the page (in case anyone adds something offensive) and a separate URL to either share with your students or post to Twtter or Facebook.

Here are some examples that I have set up to crowdsource in formation from my PLN.

• What digital skills do students need for the 21st century?
• How do we encourage pedagogically sound exploitation of technology in language learning?
• What do you want from a digital coursebook for EFL / ESL?

So how can we use this with students?

• Set up some controversial statements and get students to vote for the ones they agree / disagree with and leave pro and con comments. You could assign groups of students to all think of pros and another group to think of cons and see which can come up with the most convincing arguments. Example: Controversial Issues
  
• Your statements could be about a particular book your students are studying and they could add arguments for or against. Example: Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
  
• Get students to brainstorm word or phrases based around a theme. Example: Computer Phrases
  
• Get students to vote on a list of topics they want to study. Example: Topics
  
• Put up a list of favourite films or books or bands and get students to vote and debate which is best. Example: Favourite films
  
• Get students to brainstorm, debate and share knowledge about any particular topic or even language point. Example: Present Continuous
  
• Set up true false questions to check comprehension of a text.
• Create action research questionnaires to get feedback on the things you do in class. Example: Things we do in Class
  
• Create needs analysis questionnaires for your students or other colleagues. Example: Needs Analysis
  
• Get students create their own questionnaires and circulate them online (through Twitter or Facebook) to collect opinions. You could also get the students to use this information as part of a written assignment.

What's so good about tricider?

• It's free and really quick and easy to use.
• It's allows people to interact and share opinions.
• It doesn't require any registration.
• It's very simple for students to add their arguments or just vote.
• It updates very quickly so you could use it live in class and just click refresh as students add opinions or vote.
• It's versatile.
• It can help students pull in opinions from outside their classroom and also share opinions beyond their school.
• It creates easily digestible information.

What's not so good?

• Well there's not much wrong, but a couple of nice extra features would be:
• An embed code to allow me to embed the page into a blog or wiki.
• An archive button to enable me to close some of the debates so they don't go on forever.
• The ability to export the results to pdf or csv.

Well I hope you find tricider a useful tool and please do share any ideas you have for using it in the comments below.

Related links:

• Create a Video Q&A Booth
• So Ask Me a Question
• Create Video Questionnaires
• Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak
• Pros and Cons as Web Based Research Tasks

Best

Nik Peachey

On Mother's Day, Honor Moms Who Chose Adoption Over Abortion

I found this article on lifenews.com, and I just had to share! 

On Mother’s Day, Honor Moms Who Chose Adoption Over Abortion

Article written by Kristan Hawkins | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 5/3/11

Mother’s Day is just around the corner and this year be sure to honor all mothers, grandmothers, daughters, and birthmothers. Amanda Lord, Field Coordinator with Students for Life of America explains the importance of reaching out to all mothers, including birthmother’s this year:



Nearly every American can tell you why we celebrate Mother’s Day. People use it as a day to honor their mother, grandmother, stepmother, or someone else they view as a mother figure.



But there is one type of mother that is commonly forgotten. These mothers watch as other women receive handmade cards, flowers, breakfasts in bed, and family brunches. On Mother’s Day, they don’t receive a card made by their child, no burnt pancakes covered in maple syrup, and there isn’t a single flower to put into a vase.



Some of these forgotten mothers will spend this May 8th in tears.



The mothers I’m speaking of are Birthmoms, women who place a child for adoption. Generally, these mothers are not celebrated on Mother’s Day.  It’s not because people are cold-hearted or thoughtless toward birthmoms. Rather, most don’t know how to respond. They think it might be insensitive to say anything to a birthmom on Mother’s Day. Others are simply unaware of the birthmoms around them.



Birthmoms never celebrated their baby’s first word. They could not guide them in their first steps. They didn’t pack their child’s lunch for the first day of school. They weren’t there to take prom pictures. But they are still Mothers. They should be honored as much as mothers who parent their children. They made the ultimate and most selfless sacrifice in order that their child may live and thrive.



As a Birthmother, I am so grateful to be surrounded by people who honor me as a mother. Every year I am honored in one way or another – flowers, cards, or even dinner.  Having someone celebrate my motherhood reminds me that I am not alone on a day that can sometimes be painful.



This year, my organization – Students for Life of America – has expanded our annual Mother’s Day Postcard campaign giving individuals the opportunity to not only thank their mothers and grandmothers for choosing Life but to thank their birthmothers or a birthmother they have never met. View the postcard here.



It is my hope that there will come a day when all mothers are honored on Mother’s Day, and I believe that receiving a ‘thank you’ via an organization that helps save the lives of babies like my son would be a blessing.



To view this article on lifenews.com, click here!

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

Adoption Cards!

Hello fellow birthmoms! Reminder: Sunday, May 8th is Mother's Day, which of course means that Saturday, May 7th is Birthmother's Day! 



Below is an important message from Coley Strickland, Founder & Executive Director of Birthmom Buds.   

Dear Friends, 

Just a quick note to let you know that we have adoption cards for purchase in a new Etsy store, Heartmark Designs. Currently we have Birthmother's Day cards, cards appropriate for birthmothers to give their child's adoptive Mother for Mother's Day, and a few cards specifically for reunited birthmothers and their children. We will be adding other cards as we create them. We're currently working on some special cards appropriate for birthmothers to give their children on their birthday, which has been requested numerous times!

Feel free to spread the word about our cards. Bulk orders are available for adoption professionals.  Proceeds from the cards benefits BirthMom Buds. 

Use the code "BMOMBUDS" at checkout to receive 15% off your purchase. 

Thanks,

Coley Strickland,

Founder & Executive Director

BirthMom Buds

The Feminist Case Against Abortion

The Feminist Case Against Abortion -- Tonight at 7:00 pm at UNC Chapel Hill, Serrin M. Foster, president of Feminists for Life, will present her speech, "The Feminist Case Against Abortion," which has been anthologized in "Women's Rights" under the series "Great Speeches in History."  



Serrin has led Feminists for Life of America since 1994. Under her leadership, Feminists for Life has successfully advocated benefits for poor and pregnant women through the State Child Health Insurance Program, worked in coalition with other women's organizations to defeat the mandatory "family cap" and other punitive child exclusion provisions in welfare reform, and helped to prevent poverty and coerced abortions due to threats to withhold child support through passage of the Enhanced Child Support Act.



Serrin served on the National Taskforce Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, which worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act, and testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in support of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also known as "Laci and Conner’s Law."



Feminists for Life helped to introduce groundbreaking legislation—The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Pregnant and Parenting Student Services Act—that inspired Pregnancy Assistance Fund grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service. The grants will help put into hyper-drive new pro-woman solutions on campus.



The creator of the Women Deserve Better® than Abortion campaign has appeared on C-SPAN, CNN International, FOX News and ABC World News Tonight as an outspoken opponent of pregnancy discrimination and has focused on developing on-campus resources and support for under served pregnant and parenting students.



There will be a question and answer discussion after the talk.  The event will be held from 7:00 - 8:30pm at UNC Chapel Hill (103 Bingham).  If you can make it to this event, it will be worth your time!    



**The event is being hosted by Carolina Students for Life. 

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

I've been thinking...

I remember when I used to have time to blog.  That was fun.  When I used to have time to blog.



In all seriousness, you may have noticed that I've been a little M.I.A. lately.  Part of the reason is because I've had alot going on in my life, and I'm still learning the tricky concept of balancing work, life, and blogging.  And the other part is just the simple fact that I've had a serious case of blogger burnout.  The good news is that I really have missed Amstel Life and writing about my experience with open adoption, and I'm excited to get back into the swing of things.  So here it goes. 



I've been thinking about Deanna lot lately.  I'm not sure why.  I'm thinking that it may have to do with the fact that I've finally reached the point in my life where I could potentially support someone other than myself, financially and emotionally.  And also because I have ALOT of friends who are having babies this year.  Sometimes it's hard to see friends going through the experience of pregnancy...and enjoying it.  My pregnancy experience was very different.  



One thing I've learned about being a birthmother is that unexpected waves of sadness can happen suddenly, at any moment, an without warning.  (Although, I've come to find out that they tend to occur more frequently in times of excessive drinking, lack of sleep, and stress).  I went to a baby shower a few months ago.  I think it was only the third baby shower I had ever been to (other than my own).   Before heading into the baby shower, I was excited to celebrate.  But I didn't realized how hard it would be for me until I found myself in the actual "baby shower" moment.  I had no idea how difficult it would be to sit there and watch a cute little pregnant woman opening presents and just radiating happiness and joy.   I think I lasted 15 or 20 minutes, and then I quietly excused myself and headed for the restroom... where I had a small pity party before pulling myself together and bolting for the exit.  I wasn't prepared for that to happen, and I was actually pretty embarrassed that I had allowed my emotions to get the best of me.  When you're a birthmom, I guess you have to learn to expect the unexpected. 



A few days ago I went to get some pictures developed at the drug store.  I wandered around aimlessly while I waited.  I entered the Valentine's Day aisle, and I started looking around at the ginormous (is that a word?) selection of Valentine candies, gifts, and cards galore.  My thoughts wandered, and I began thinking about Valentine's Day when I was a child.  I fondly remembered the way my mom used to leave presents for my sisters and I at the breakfast table every morning of a big holiday.  I remember walking sleepily down the stairs and bursting with excitement upon seeing the little gifts and candy hearts, packaged so nicely, sitting there on the kitchen table.  Suddenly, without warning, I was overcome by sadness.  I started thinking about how I wished that I had the opportunity to do that for Deanna -- to surprise her with little gifts on the morning of a holiday.  It caught me off guard because I haven't felt that kind of sadness for a long time. I mean a long time!  I didn't feel too embarrassed though, because I'm sure the Rite Aid employees are probably used to random women getting all emotional and teary-eyed in the Valentine's Day aisle.  



If there's one thing I know to be true about birthmothers, it's that we never forget.  Yes, it gets easier as time goes on, but you never really forget. I remember that I cried a few times every single day in the weeks after Deanna was born.  And then I probably cried once a day during freshman year of college.  Then I cried once a week sophomore year... and weeks turned to months and months turned to years, and suddenly it's been five and a half years since Deanna was born.  To tell you the truth, I hardly ever get emotional or upset anymore.  I truly have peace of mind in knowing that this is the way things were supposed to work out, and I know that Don, De and Deanna are doing great!  But every once and again, and without warning, those ugly adoption demons come out of nowhere and remind me of what I have been through.  Yes, even in the middle of Rite Aid. 



This past weekend marked the six year anniversary of meeting Don and De for the very first time. I think De has a special intuition when it comes to knowing how I'm feeling.  Even though she's an entire state away, she sent me a text saying that she's been thinking of me alot lately and asked if there was anything she could be praying about.  It's funny -- I'd been thinking alot about her recently too.  The nice thing about open adoption is that I can tell De exactly how I'm feeling (although writing how I'm feeling comes much more naturally). :)



I decided to send Deanna a special box of Valentine's Day goodies -- just like my mom used to do for me.  Except instead of seeing Deanna open them, I get to hear the stories from Don and De (or watch the videos on facebook).  And I'm okay with that.  Just like I had my own special memories of Valentine's Day, Deanna will also have her own special memories that Don and De will be a part of.   More updates to come...



 Happy Valentine's Day!