Group items tagged

Published April, 2015 Project IDEAL by Jerome (Jere) Johnston, Sheryl Hart, Destiny Long and Jenifer Vanek, is a new professional development resource for adult educators from Project IDEAL (Improving Distance Education for Adult Learners). The vignettes include: 1. Creating an ESL Classroom Online 2. Developing Independent Learning Skills in a GED Prep Class 3. Preparing for College: Mindquest Academy 4. Independent Learning Skills For ESL Students 5. Broadening the Academic Horizon for GED Students 6. Expanding the Writing Curriculum Beyond GED Prep 7. Technology-­‐Rich Writing Instruction for ESL Students 8. Vocational Education in an ESL Class

wireWax is a new service (still in beta) that takes the concept of YouTube annotations and makes it much better. On wireWax you can build interactive tags into your videos. Each tag that you add to your video have another video from YouTube or Vimeo or an image from Facebook, Flickr, or Instagram. A tag can also include an audio track from SoundCloud or a reference article from Qwiki. What makes using wireWax different from using the YouTube annotations tool is that clicking on your tags (what YouTube calls annotations) does not send you outside of the video you're currently watching. This means that you can watch a video within a video or view a picture or listen to a different audio track within the original video. When you click a tag in the original video the video pauses and the tagged item is displayed. wireWax allows you to add tags to any YouTube video that is publicly viewable and has not had embedding disabled. I tried wireWax with this five minute video. It took a while (15-20 minutes) for the video to process for tagging, but once it was processed it was easy to create a tag. To create my tag I just advanced the video to the spot I wanted to tag, drew a box around the person I was tagging, then selected the wireWax YouTube app to put a video within the original video. Check it out below by advancing to about the 1.5 minute mark. Applications for Education wireWax could be a great tool for adding new layers of information to educational videos. If you're creating videos for your students or your students are creating videos to share with others consider tagging key points at which viewers might have questions. At those points insert tags that reveal clarifying information in the form of a video, an image, or an audio recording. 

"50 Essential Vocabulary Sets in 3 Different Sizes -- Use these flashcards for teaching English, Spanish, Chinese or any other second language. The BIG CARDS make it easy to present vocabulary to the whole class. The MID-SIZED CARDS are great for teaching small groups of students. The SMALL SETS OF PICTURES work well for playing language learning games such as Down-Pass or Go Fish. Best of all, they're all FREE! Currently we have 968 total images and 2904 total flashcards. Enjoy!"

SoundCloud is a free tool for creating and sharing sound tracks. On Monday I included it in my list of alternatives to Aviary. Today, I showed it to some teachers at the Bancroft School in Massachusetts. When I showed the option for inserting text comments into the sound tracks a teacher spoke up with an idea for using Sound Cloud in a world languages course. The suggestion the teacher made was to have students record spoken tracks on Sound Cloud and share them with her. Then she could use the comment feature to provide feedback that is tied directly to each student's recording. The comments could be tied to the exact second at which a student pronounces something incorrectly, uses the wrong verb form, or to praise a student for pronouncing a new word particularly well. SoundCloud allows you to have up to two hours of recordings stored in your account at one time. After that you need to either delete an old recording or upgrade to a paid plan.

"Educational games are a great tool for building foundation math and language skills that today's elementary school curriculum requires. These online learning games and songs for kids are fun, teach important skills for preschool and elementary school kids and they're free. Want educational games that help build skills in math, language, science, social studies, and more? You've come to the right place!"

Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material for your classroom.

"It's easy, fast, cool, and even free. What more could you ask for? So, we could tell you how great this little web tool is, how it let's you upload your photos and pictures, add comic style word balloons, then save them and use them for whatever you want. But, weI'll just let you play with the app and check it out for yourself. Enjoy!"

The Imagination Prompt Generator randomly generates prompts for starting a fictional story. Imagination Prompt Generator is part of the Creativity Portal which offers ideas for free creative projects. Most of the project ideas in the kids section of the Creativity Portal are appropriate for elementary school and possibly middle school age students.

This site contains 23 different search engines which are designed for use by children and suitable for use in the classroom for research projects. Sites include the BBC, NASA, Encarta and Ask Jeeves Kids. The website was set up to support the international school communities (teachers, support staff, administrators, students and families) in 17 countries in South East Asia but schools worldwide would find the site a useful resource.

This free online editor for typing transcriptions of English words in the International Phonetic Alphabet has been around since 2004. Many ESL/EFL teachers find it useful for transcribing English words for printed handouts and pronunciation exercises, especially if one uses the keyboard shortcuts.

Haiku Deck's web application is a great tool for designing visually-appealing slideshows. The latest update to the Haiku Deck web app includes support for charts and graphs. Now in your Haiku Deck slides you can create bar graphs, pie charts, and stat charts. You can adjust the values in bar graphs by clicking and dragging each column. Pie charts are made by typing percentages. Stat charts are simply captioned columns of statistics. The latest update to Haiku Deck also includes support for multiline slides. This is a feature that I'm not terribly excited about because it allows students to write more text on their slides than they could before. One of my favorite features of Haiku Deck has always been the text limitations which forced students to choose their words carefully.

"PublicDomainPictures.net is a repository for free public domain images. Download high quality HD photos or upload your own. Make money from your hobby, gain popularity and improve your photographic and graphic skills. If you intend to use an image you find here for commercial use, please be aware that some photos do require a model or property release. Pictures featuring products should be used with care. The pictures are free for you to use and you should feel good about doing so. If you enjoy your visit, please tell your friends about Public Domain Pictures.net."

"SUNIPIX® provides royalty free stock photographs for everyday use. You may use our photographs for your personal and business needs. Our pictures can also be converted to posters for your home and office. We have a collection of over 15000 images."

"EnglishForEveryone.org is your resource for printable English worksheets. On the left of this page you will find an index containing hundreds of quality teaching materials. To open a PDF file for printing, simply click on the topic of your choice then select the desired worksheet from the links on that page. You are welcome to use any of the materials on this website without asking permission, granted that our strict copyright policy is respected. If you'd like to thank us, please tell your friends about this website and consider linking to our web pages (see our Terms of Use to learn how). We appreciate your interest and support, and hope you find our materials to be beneficial for use in the classroom or at home. "

"InfuseLearning is a breakthrough virtual learner response solution. Sign-up now and let us know your feedback."

Watch the videos and learn how to do lots of different things like...how to do magic and party tricks, how to care for kittens, how to fix a dripping tap. A great resource for students to practise their listening skills outside the classroom.

From Longman publishers a site with general teaching tips for teachers - using video, dealing with noisy teens. There are also some articles for reference and information on teaching methodology.

Joomag is the first innovative service for digital interactive magazine publishing and hosting. It features a powerful platform for creating digital interactive content, including magazines, e-books, catalogs, reports, brochures and photo albums, and delivers an exceptional reading experience to users thanks to the carefully designed online viewer with realistic flipping effects and user friendly magnifying and panning features.

Since 1997, kids, teachers, librarians, and parents have enthusiastically turned to Funbrain for its free educational games, online books, and comics. Funbrain, created for kids ages preschool through grade 8, offers more than 100 fun, interactive games that develop skills in math, reading, and literacy. Plus, kids can read a variety of popular books and comics on the site, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Amelia Writes Again, and Brewster Rocket.