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Get your Students Listening and Interacting with Native Speakers

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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:
Best

Nik Peachey

I've been thinking...

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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!



3 More Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with Technology

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At the end of 2010 I published the first 5 tasks in a series to help teacher learn how to use technology with their students. Now I would like to add 3 more tasks to that collection. The first few tasks are all quite simple to lay the ground work and get teachers started. As the series progresses I hope to get on to more adventurous tasks. Please feel free to use these tasks yourself or to share or use them for teacher training.

Task 6: Creating a video review activity
In this task you’ll learn how to create a film trailer review activity using film trailers from YouTube and an online notice board called Wallwisher. Here’s an example to look at before you start: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/nikstrailers

Wallwisher is a really useful tool for giving students a semi restricted choice of online videos or links to other resources from around the Internet.


Task 7: Creating screenshots using Jing
Jing is a really useful free tool that allows you to create and annotate images grabbed from the screen of your computer.
This can be really useful for creating instruction sheets like the ones used in this series and helps you to grab images to add into websites or other documents.

Task 8: Create your own YouTube channel
Video has become one of the most useful resources on the Internet for language teachers. There are a great many video sharing websites on the Internet, but YouTube is by far the biggest.
In this task you will create your own YouTube channel. It’s very useful to have your own channel even if you never create your own videos. It enable you to subscribe to other channels, share videos with groups of your students and even annotate and add subtitles to videos. We’ll be doing all those things in future tasks, but in this task you will create your channel and subscribe to some other useful channels.
I hope you find these tasks useful and I hope that you'll soon find some more here.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

Breaking down open adoptions

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Breaking down open adoptions
Pennsylvania's new law encourages relationships between child, birth family
-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 

5 Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with Technology

Comment
Some months ago I had a plan to write a book of tasks to get teachers using technology. As with so many of my plans and ideas, time and circumstances over took me and I never got further than the first 15 tasks. When I went back to do some more I noticed that I was taking so long doing these that some had gone out of date, so to try to get some use from the tasks I've decided to revise them and start publishing them here so anyone can download them and use them either to do teacher training or to develop their own ability to use technology.

So here are the first five. If they are popular I'll publish the next 5 for new year, so they can be my new years resolution and yours.

Task 1: Create your learning journal
So here goes. The first task is based around Penzu and you can download the task or read it on Scribd. In this task you'll create an online journal that you can use to reflect on the other tasks you'll be doing, so you should do this one first.

Task 2: Create online storage for your teaching images
In this task you will create a Flickr photo sharing channel. You'll need to do this to enable you to best do some of the later tasks as they come up, but having your own store of images online that you can use for various teaching purposes is always really handy.
Task 3: Create an online speaking activity
In this task you'll learn how to create an online speaking activity using VoiceThread. So if you have never done that before try the task and see how your students like the activity you create.
Task 4: Create a blog with a video activity for your students
In this task you'll create a simple blog and use it to make a video based activity for your students. Many of you may already have your own blog, but it's a good idea to have a separate one that you can use to experiment with and create activities for students. Once you have created the blog you'll be using it for other tasks as you work through them.
Task 5: Create digital books with illustrations
In this task you will create a digital image book based around a short text. Once you have created the book you will embed it into the blog you created in the previous task.
If you manage to do any of the tasks please do leave a comment and tell me how they went and if the response is good I'll try to put 5 more tasks on the site early in the new year.

So, if you celebrate Xmas please take these as my gift and if you don't celebrate it, you will have more time to do the tasks.

Best wishes for 2011.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey

So Ask Me a Question

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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:
Best

Nik Peachey

Grow Your Own Personal Learning Network

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Well this is my first blog posting for quite a while, but I'm hoping to have a lot more coming up very soon. This is just a quick posting to share a session on building your own Personal Learning Network, that I did for teachers in British Council Bilbao recently (25th September 2010).

The session was part of a larger conference that was happening all over Spain to celebrate 70 years of the BC in Spain.

You can watch a recording my conference presentation here.


Or follow this link to it: http://tinyurl.com/382rmy2

The links from the presentation are also below and you can download a PDF copy of the presentation slides here: PLN Presentation slides (PDF 4.7 Mb)

Tools for growing your PLN

Twitter
LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn is a great place to put your online CV, connect with other ELT professionals and start joining special interest groups. The groups are a great place for sharing and finding information.
    http://www.linkedin.com
  • I'm on LinkedIn at: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/nikpeachey
Facebook
  • Although controversial as a teaching tool, Facebook can also be a useful professional networking tool, just start looking for the ‘Like’ button on various websites and click it to keep in touch with what’s happening. http://www.facebook.com
  • I'm on Facebook too and am in the process of creating a page for people interested in learning technology in ELT. http://www.facebook.com/NikPeachey
Ning and other independent social networks
  • Many of the IATEFL Special interest groups use Ning for discussion of very specific areas of teaching. Here's an example from the Global Issues SIG
    http://global-issues.ning.com/
Yahoo Groups
Blogs of course
Some great bloggers to follow are:
Feed Readers
Storing links and social bookmarking
These are great tools for storing links to information so that you can find them when you want them and share them with others.
Simplybox

Here are some tools for reflection

Slinkset
More information
I'd really like to add a special than you to Barbara Sakamoto from Teaching Village for allowing me to share here work on PLNs and for helping to save me and I hope you a lot of work too.

Please also check out the other recorded presentations as they include:
I hope you find these useful and thank you to everyone at the British Council Bilbao for their hospitality and professionalism under pressure.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
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الخميس، 17 مارس 2011

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:
Best

Nik Peachey
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الاثنين، 14 فبراير 2011

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!



مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:

الخميس، 20 يناير 2011

3 More Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with Technology

At the end of 2010 I published the first 5 tasks in a series to help teacher learn how to use technology with their students. Now I would like to add 3 more tasks to that collection. The first few tasks are all quite simple to lay the ground work and get teachers started. As the series progresses I hope to get on to more adventurous tasks. Please feel free to use these tasks yourself or to share or use them for teacher training.

Task 6: Creating a video review activity
In this task you’ll learn how to create a film trailer review activity using film trailers from YouTube and an online notice board called Wallwisher. Here’s an example to look at before you start: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/nikstrailers

Wallwisher is a really useful tool for giving students a semi restricted choice of online videos or links to other resources from around the Internet.


Task 7: Creating screenshots using Jing
Jing is a really useful free tool that allows you to create and annotate images grabbed from the screen of your computer.
This can be really useful for creating instruction sheets like the ones used in this series and helps you to grab images to add into websites or other documents.

Task 8: Create your own YouTube channel
Video has become one of the most useful resources on the Internet for language teachers. There are a great many video sharing websites on the Internet, but YouTube is by far the biggest.
In this task you will create your own YouTube channel. It’s very useful to have your own channel even if you never create your own videos. It enable you to subscribe to other channels, share videos with groups of your students and even annotate and add subtitles to videos. We’ll be doing all those things in future tasks, but in this task you will create your channel and subscribe to some other useful channels.
I hope you find these tasks useful and I hope that you'll soon find some more here.

Related links:
Best

Nik Peachey
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التسميات: , , ,

الخميس، 16 ديسمبر 2010

Breaking down open adoptions

Breaking down open adoptions
Pennsylvania's new law encourages relationships between child, birth family
-Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 
مرسلة بواسطة في ليست هناك تعليقات:

5 Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with Technology

Some months ago I had a plan to write a book of tasks to get teachers using technology. As with so many of my plans and ideas, time and circumstances over took me and I never got further than the first 15 tasks. When I went back to do some more I noticed that I was taking so long doing these that some had gone out of date, so to try to get some use from the tasks I've decided to revise them and start publishing them here so anyone can download them and use them either to do teacher training or to develop their own ability to use technology.

So here are the first five. If they are popular I'll publish the next 5 for new year, so they can be my new years resolution and yours.

Task 1: Create your learning journal
So here goes. The first task is based around Penzu and you can download the task or read it on Scribd. In this task you'll create an online journal that you can use to reflect on the other tasks you'll be doing, so you should do this one first.

Task 2: Create online storage for your teaching images
In this task you will create a Flickr photo sharing channel. You'll need to do this to enable you to best do some of the later tasks as they come up, but having your own store of images online that you can use for various teaching purposes is always really handy.
Task 3: Create an online speaking activity
In this task you'll learn how to create an online speaking activity using VoiceThread. So if you have never done that before try the task and see how your students like the activity you create.
Task 4: Create a blog with a video activity for your students
In this task you'll create a simple blog and use it to make a video based activity for your students. Many of you may already have your own blog, but it's a good idea to have a separate one that you can use to experiment with and create activities for students. Once you have created the blog you'll be using it for other tasks as you work through them.
Task 5: Create digital books with illustrations
In this task you will create a digital image book based around a short text. Once you have created the book you will embed it into the blog you created in the previous task.
If you manage to do any of the tasks please do leave a comment and tell me how they went and if the response is good I'll try to put 5 more tasks on the site early in the new year.

So, if you celebrate Xmas please take these as my gift and if you don't celebrate it, you will have more time to do the tasks.

Best wishes for 2011.

Related links:
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Nik Peachey
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الأربعاء، 24 نوفمبر 2010

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.

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Nik Peachey
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الاثنين، 27 سبتمبر 2010

Grow Your Own Personal Learning Network

Well this is my first blog posting for quite a while, but I'm hoping to have a lot more coming up very soon. This is just a quick posting to share a session on building your own Personal Learning Network, that I did for teachers in British Council Bilbao recently (25th September 2010).

The session was part of a larger conference that was happening all over Spain to celebrate 70 years of the BC in Spain.

You can watch a recording my conference presentation here.


Or follow this link to it: http://tinyurl.com/382rmy2

The links from the presentation are also below and you can download a PDF copy of the presentation slides here: PLN Presentation slides (PDF 4.7 Mb)

Tools for growing your PLN

Twitter
LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn is a great place to put your online CV, connect with other ELT professionals and start joining special interest groups. The groups are a great place for sharing and finding information.
    http://www.linkedin.com
  • I'm on LinkedIn at: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/nikpeachey
Facebook
  • Although controversial as a teaching tool, Facebook can also be a useful professional networking tool, just start looking for the ‘Like’ button on various websites and click it to keep in touch with what’s happening. http://www.facebook.com
  • I'm on Facebook too and am in the process of creating a page for people interested in learning technology in ELT. http://www.facebook.com/NikPeachey
Ning and other independent social networks
  • Many of the IATEFL Special interest groups use Ning for discussion of very specific areas of teaching. Here's an example from the Global Issues SIG
    http://global-issues.ning.com/
Yahoo Groups
Blogs of course
Some great bloggers to follow are:
Feed Readers
Storing links and social bookmarking
These are great tools for storing links to information so that you can find them when you want them and share them with others.
Simplybox

Here are some tools for reflection

Slinkset
More information
I'd really like to add a special than you to Barbara Sakamoto from Teaching Village for allowing me to share here work on PLNs and for helping to save me and I hope you a lot of work too.

Please also check out the other recorded presentations as they include:
I hope you find these useful and thank you to everyone at the British Council Bilbao for their hospitality and professionalism under pressure.

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Nik Peachey
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