Group items tagged

October 31, 2011

trying to have a conversation with someone you have never met, over a low quality video connection, in a language you don’t speak very well, is quite challenging socially as well as linguistically.

http://voicethread.com/#q.b562.i4705Here is a way to include specific content.

Micro-blogging via Twitter is another way to link students outside of class. Let's be honest -- there are not many young people out there who do not already tweet. You can use Twitter in class in a similar fashion to blogging. If you do, I strongly suggest that you use TweetDeck to efficiently manage your students' tweets. I also love having students tweet a story. You start by tweeting the first line of the story based on the unit you are studying.

6. Google Drive

An unlimited number of users can contribute to a padlet at the same time, making collaborative work very easy.

  No account necessary to collaborate

adding example sentences to a shared class padlet

2. Incorporate listening and drawing activities with Pear Deck: Pear Deck is the perfect way to make your Google Slides interactive. Try using the Pear Deck Chrome extension for listening and drawing activities: Add a Pear Deck interactive “Drawing” slide and read a description aloud.For example, I will read the following description aloud (in Spanish) to my Spanish I classes: “The boy is tall, thin, and has black, curly hair and green eyes. The boy is feeling happy because it is warm and sunny outside. He likes to listen to music and read, but he does not like to study or play sports.”As I read off this description, students draw what they hear. Once their drawings are complete, I ask them to restate what they drew aloud. You can also ask them to write about what they drew. Students are enthused when I project all of their drawings on the board—each student’s drawing is different and has its own style, even though everyone heard the same description.

This article focuses on the use, potential benefits, and best practices of interactive visual media in online education and remote learning. We will discuss: What are the main arguments for interactive visual media in online learning? What are some examples and best practices for creating visual learning materials for students? How can students use interactive visual media for documenting and sharing their learning?

Interactive images, videos, and virtual tours can support online learning by providing an alternative to text-based communication. Here are three arguments for why this is the case.

Humans remember pictures better than words (the “picture superiority effect”)

MovieTalk works because it links meaning between the language used by the teacher to the images on the screen. In other words, it makes the linguistic input comprehensible to the student. “Comprehensible” of course, is a bit of a gray term—meaning that something is reasonably able to be understood by the audience—and it is up to the teacher to employ skills such as teaching to the eyes and using comprehension checks to guarantee that the comprehensible language is actually comprehended.

Sometimes, I select MovieTalks because of their topic: the content relates to something that we are studying or discussing in class. Other times, I select MovieTalks because of the vocabulary: I know that I can talk about the video using the same words that I am working with in class with my students. And still other times, I select MovieTalks because they are just so dang fun and easy and I plop them into the middle of a unit for no reason at all!

Complete the storyCreate a story and ask students how it should continue. Students can post their ideas on the Padlet. Finally, take some of your students' ideas and complete the story. You’ll have some funny stories!

What is Padlet?