CALL_IS_VSL

This is a great collection of videos made by students about real world problems. Includes curriculum kits to help other schools start similar projects.

MERLOT is creating a center on YouTube with educational videos for teacher professional development. The selections so far include ePortfolios, Case Stories of technology installations, information about MERLOT, and a demonstration of MERLOT's campus in Second Life.

"This wikibook article discusses Second Life, a virtual environment. The first part of this article, Introduction, gives a brief introduction to virtual environments and to the features of Second Life. The second part of this article, Characteristics of Second Life, discusses the theoretical features of virtual environments. The third part, Uses of Second Life & Projects in Second Life, focuses on uses of Second Life for social activism, education, and language teaching and learning. The final part of this article, Criticisms, Problems, and Limitations, includes a discussion of the most serious social problems occurring in Second Life and the constraints that individuals face when using Second Life."

This is a very straightforward analysis of Second Life and even considers ethical issues in virtual worlds.

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) has started its own YouTube site to collect resources for teachers. Recent films include Second Life and ePortfolios. This spot should develop into a very useful place on the Web.

Slideshow showing uses of SL for a Spanish Course. Students take a bus, check into a hotel, etc.

This blog has embedded videos showing sessions in Second Life in Dafne Gonzalez's ELT classes.

"This is a guide with step-by-step instructions for recording and publishing internet video.

Make Internet TV is suitable for many levels of experience; just jump right in at the chapter that seems right for you."

"This guide includes step-by-step instructions for the basic editing programs that come with Windows and Apple computers. We have also included an introduction to editing video on a Linux machine."

Links to video-based tutorials on the free video editing software available for each of the major platforms. Very useful for students.

A free version of Photoshop--loads of options and things it can do!

"The volunteer developers of The GIMP have been working hard to develop a polished, user-friendly, and freely distributed image editor. Although the separated palette windows may disturb those users who are used to more traditional layouts, your comfort level should grow exponentially as you discover how pain-free the program is."

"Easy Thumbnails is a popular free Windows utility for creating accurate thumbnail images and scaled-down/up copies from a wide range of popular picture formats. An elegant interface makes it a snap to find your images and select them for processing individually, in groups, or in whole folders, using a simple file selector and built-in image viewer. You can use slider controls to rotate images and adjust their contrast, brightness, sharpness and quality, and check out the results with the built-in viewer."

I have put together a Wiki for my students to use. I have stressed that it is not part of their regular course but is there for them to visit and assist them in learning English.

It goes for 16 weeks (the length of their course) and every week it has sections on Reading/Writing, Grammar, Litsening and Speaking. I also included sectioins on TOEFL, Environmental video and Pronunciation. There are exercises (links) for the students and all in all, it is a fun site to visit. If you want to join the Wiki and make material postings... make yourself at home.

Please keep in mind that I AM in Oman and most of my students are young Omani university girls 18-20 years old. They are not the most liberal minded people and not prone to Adult entertainment. They are great students who are willing and eager to learn and a true pleasure to teach.

Check it out and tell me what you think. Positive and Negative comments are welcome. So, send your students, send your enemies and even your enemy's students. Feel free to post bills on the local Metro, buses and outside your favorite adult beverage establishment.

Gary Harwell
www.teachergary.com

a series of GoogleWave tutorials collected by Dafne Gonzalez at the WebheadsWave Wiki.

"Penpal Amis is the free penpal language exchange that is designed to help students find pen pals and pen friends who are native speakers of the languages that they are studying. "

"Safely connect, collaborate and learn using our leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts"

Not just epals, but also project-based, collaborative learning with a variety of curriculum content.

" * Fix your photos in just one click
* Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
* Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time
* Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
* Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
* Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
* Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
* Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
* No download required, nothing to install
* All this for free! "

"Adobe Photoshop is any serious photographer or graphic designer's application of choice but you'll have to cough up quite a lot of bills to get it. Another solution is to use Photofiltre, a lesser known and more basic yet free and solid image editing application."

User reviews are excellent on this FREE product.

"Resize 2 mail is an online resize website utility developed for digital camera owners, webmasters, people travelling or anybody who quickly wants to resize a digital image for email or publishing on a web site."

This would be very useful if you don't have Graphic Converter or Photoshop.

Learning Made Mobile issue focuses on iPod and apps 4 learning.

"See the Arts Impact program in action as teachers participate in the summer institute and teach the arts in their classrooms. Hear comments from participating teachers and artist mentors."

This is a very nice teacher training video if you are using drama and/or art in the classroom. Great ideas.

Like most items at TeacherTube, these videos are uneven in content and production values, but contain several real gems.