Group items tagged

R. Byrne has a nice description of two apps to make interviews with -- a great listening speaking activity for ELLs, with some writing to make up questions. "The Opinion app could be a good choice if you just want students quickly create a simple recording. Students might use Opinion to record a quick reflection on what they learned during the week. If they have SoundCloud accounts Opinion makes it easy to create an on-going audio blog. "StoryCorps.me will take a little more time for students to set-up than they will spend setting-up the Opinion app. That said, StoryCorps.me is the app that I would want students to use when they are recording podcasts involving two or more people. Being able to see the questions while they record should help students keep their interviews concise and on track. "

"Figuring out which students participate in a class discussion-and how often-can be a huge challenge. Equity Maps is an iPad app for keeping track of that. "You start by creating a seating chart that shows where students are sitting for a discussion. When the discussion starts, you just tap each student's icon as that student contributes to the conversation. Equity Maps keeps track of how long each student talks so that when you're done, you can get a summary of how often each class member participated, how many were active participants, and whether there was equal gender distribution among those who actively engaged." Sounds like a good teacher tool. T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

"Student choice is not only a simple way to increase student engagement, it's also an essential factor in developing digital literacy while building 21st century life and career skills. Choice boards typically start with a specific learning goal, then provide students with a variety of ways to practice a skill, learn a concept, or demonstrate understanding." Site offers a variety of Choice board templates for your classroom use.

A set of G-slides that can be used for writing a novel. This approach really works with short stories and poetry, and over the course of a semester or year term would work for a longer effort. Makes a great project for group effort as well. My niece wrote a novel in 2nd year of secondary school, and self-published on Amazon. Great idea for teaching writing, critical thinking, and long-range planning.

The criteria to get on this list is extremely similar to its companion list [see Best Places Where Students Can Write for an Authentic Audience]: * The work required to create the learning and/or teaching object would not be that great, and could be finished in a reasonable amount of time - a few days at a maximum and preferably much, much less. * The creating and posting process is simple - accessible both to my English Language Learner students and to me. * Posting the piece does not necessarily require any kind of ongoing commitment for communication - once it's up, it might be interesting to check-back after awhile to see if there have been any reactions (if the site is set-up for that kind of involvement), but it's really just a matter of sticking it up there in a place that gets a fair amount of "traffic" and knowing that it's likely others will read it. * There seems to be some kind of enforced standards for all the content that's posted on the site. In other words, when students explore it to see models of what others have written, it's unlikely they will encounter something that is inappropriate for classroom use.

"Draftback is a good web tool that allows you to playback the revision history of any Google Doc you can edit. You will be able to watch your edits roll out in a video player as if you are watching a movie. We have tried this extension a couple of times and it worked perfectly well. As a teacher, you can use Draftback to track students revision history to identify how much work and time they have put into their writing. You will also be able to see whether doc is their own writing or they have been copying and pasting stuff from the Internet."

This is a nice version of Alice. You can have students conduct a chat--they type, and Alice answers orally. There is also a pull-down menu of questions and replies to use. You can allow students to "get crazy," or ask them to try to make a coherent "conversation." A nice way, potentially, to practice "polite conversation" before trying it out with a real human. From EFL Classroom 2.0.

"In the site, you will find a variety of review games, classroom management software, and other miscellaneous tools for educators." Students and/or teachers can make and share learning games on this, site, for example, a customized Jeopardy review of vocabulary or a board game where players must answer questions about a reading to advance. Also contains teacher tools such as a seating chart maker, a group maker to randomly assign students to groups, etc. And also lots of links to population counters, hangman, random fact generator, etc.

"A quick introduction to why Google Docs. This is a really useful, free tool and only the teacher needs to have a Google account to create a Google Doc. Teachers can create a document and then students can immediately access it via the shared link. Students can then edit and add to the document, so this is ideal for group work and collaborative work both in the class and at home. It has countless uses and is an technology tool that is widely used in industry. This quick introduction takes you through the basics of working with Google Docs." By R. Stannard.

"Formative assessment is a planned process in which teachers or students use assessment-based evidence to adjust what they're currently doing. "In other words, if teachers or students are not leveraging results/data (from Socrative, Kahoot!, Plickers, etc.) to then differentiate instruction or learning, the app inspired dog and pony show does not qualify as a formative assessment. "Formative assessment is a process…not an event, questions on a piece of paper, or even an app. What makes an assessment formative depends on the context in which it is used." Based on a blog/book co-authored by Ross Cooper and Erin Murphy. You can sign up for more chapters free on the site. The articles represent a measured discussion of how apps and "cool tools" can be used successfully, without hype.

Teacher training video by R. Stannard: "This set of videos will give you a full introduction into using JING which is a free screen capture tool from a company called Techsmith. If you are interested in learning about screen capture and you are looking for a FREE tool then JING is a great place to start. You can download JING screen capture technology from this link: https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html Don't forget your students can also use the same technology. It can be used in a huge range of different ways." Stannard provides tips on how you and your students can use screen capture in various ways. JING is free and easy to use.

This is a nice way to cheaply add subtitles (or comments!) within G-Drive. 1. Create a text file on your desktop using the format/coding recommended in this instructional video. (You will need to specify the times where each subtitle appears.) 2. Save the file, changing the extension to .SRT 3. Go back to your video in G-Drive and select the >Details tab on the right sidebar. At the bottom of the list is >Caption tracks. 4. Select >New caption track, and select the .SRT file you have created. 5. Select a language and give the caption file a name. 6. Select >Upload and >Done 7. You can edit the text file within G-Drive also. Now when you open the movie, the subtitles will show. Instead of doing the subtitles for students, this might be a great project to have students do, as a test to see if they have mastered their own work. You may find some surprising results.

"iStoryBooks offers dozens of children's stories (some free, some for sale) like The Ugly Duckling. The app gives you the option to read each story or to read along with each story while listening to the narrator." Looks like a good application to use in a one-computer classroom, where a small group of children might listen to a story in the corner. Read along while listening is a great way to learn to read and learn the sounds of a new language.

"This addictive game plunks you down somewhere in the world using Google Street view. You literally start on some country road and the whole point of the game is to figure out where in the world you are. You can navigate down the road in the app, and you can turn around and zoom in to look more closely at things, but because the game often chooses the most remote locations, you often find yourself traveling for quite a while before you see any clues. Once you do see something-a road sign, ideally, or something at least with language on it-you can start figuring it out. "I don't even know if this is following the rules, but the times I've played this, I've been amazed at the number of resources I ended up pulling together to figure things out: I do Google image matches, use Google Translate to figure out what a language even is, and even look things up on Wikipedia to figure out if I'm on the right track. I've had four or five different tabs open to try and narrow down a precise location, and all the while, I'm learning stuff. I had no idea, for example, that there was an island called Gotland off the coast of Sweden! Or that there's an animal called a springhare in South Africa that looks an awful lot like a kangaroo" T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

"Learn English online with the help of this free website from the British Council with games, stories, listening activities and grammar exercises. You can search for your favourites, or have a look at the site map to find out where everything is. This is a BETA site and you will find lots of new listening activities and video content in Listen & Watch. We also have a new Grammar section and new IELTS exam practice materials. Click here to return to the 'old' LearnEnglish website. Double-click any word to see a dictionary definition. You can contact us if you have a question or want to report any problems. Become a member and you can add comments to the site and ask questions to get help with your English." This site has thematic/situationally based videos.

"A week or so ago, someone in the Macmillan marketing department took it upon themselves to send out this tweet. What grabbed my attention was the claim that it is 'a well-known fact' that teaching students a growth mindset makes them perform better academically over time. The easily demonstrable reality (which I'll come on to) is that this is not a fact. It's fake news, being used for marketing purposes. " The article looks at several research projects -- pro and con -- to come to this conclusion. A good read for those sceptical of simplistic, but vague, solutions to the broad, complex problem of school success.

This web resource is for teachers of high beginning and intermediate writing courses and intermediate ESL learners. The resource provides 8 units that 1) teach about paragraph structure and paragraph elements: topic sentence, supporting sentences, and concluding sentence 2) introduce transition words and coherence in a paragraph 3) provide the opportunity to learn about and practice basic writing skills such as making an outline and staying on topic. Clear explanations are supported by examples; therefore, teacher can use this resource for class preparation, and ESL learners can use it as additional material to learn about paragraph writing. Practice activities provided by the website are not interactive; however, most of the assessment tasks have answer keys. In addition, each unit provides lesson in a PDF format that can be used by a teacher as a handout. -- From Lena Shvidko For ESL K-12 learners, but would be useful for adults as well. Focuses on the paragraph, rather than the essay, so makes a good beginning set of lessons.

R. Byrne: "Odyssey.js is a new open source map creation tool from CartoDB. Through Odyssey.js you can create mapped stories in three formats; slide, scroll, and torque. In all three formats viewers will see a location on a map along with the text and pictures of your story. The slide and scroll formats are fairly straight-forward, you click through slides or scroll through a story. The torque format allows you to connect elements of your map to a timeline." This tool could be used to map history, parts of novels, the immigration of peoples, the expansion of wars, etc. Mapping and visualization are always good to enhance learning.

"Want to make an amazing timeline? * Create a timeline for almost anything * Add multiple layers to keep events organized * Keep your timelines private or share them with others * Preceden is completely web-based and 100% free" "When you hover over an event, the timeline will display the approximate length of the event at your cursor location. Other ideas for timelines: coordinate a get together, research history, track your startup, organize a vacation, mastermind Thanksgiving dinner, learn about family history, plan a revolution, etc." User can set up layers, e.g., education, relationships, locations in a biography. Doesn't have ability to upload pictures or video, however. Good instructional page with examples.