Group items tagged

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this already (so forgive me if this is a repeat!), but basically Tumblr is like a blog hybrid that allows you post just about anything (as the site states: "Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors to your theme's HTML."). The site is very creativity-oriented, and seems like a potentially very useful online resource for students to express themselves creatively, to write and publish for a real audience, to gain exposure to cultural dimensions of the target speech community, and to enhance their digital literacy.

This is a quirky website that I used in my high school creative writing class. I think that ESLers could use this page to talk about syllables, pronunciation, and of course rhyming. Through a simple search, students could discover a very wide variety of new words from the suggested rhymes on this site. The attention to phoneme-grapheme association (spelling vs. pronunciation) will reinforce emerging literacy skills. Overall, I just find this to be a fun site for generating ideas and word knowledge.

Some of us discussed pecha kuchu last semester in Dr. Stoller's foundations course. It's a method of presentation that literally translates to "death by power point." The idea came about because people were getting so bored at large conferences when presenters were going on and on about there research. This style of presentation allows each slide to be up for 20 seconds and the total time is 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Presenters were not allowed to go over this allotted time. Students in Dr. Stoller's class last semester were given 5 minutes to present on the research we did all semester. Personally, I found it difficult to present all the information I wanted to, but I also was surprised by how much I could actually fit into five minutes. So how does this relate to language learning/teaching? Pecha Flickr is a program that allows you to type in a tag word, like fish or dog. Then, it will pull up different pictures on Flickr that are tagged with those words for 20 seconds at a time. Students could give a mock presentation or even be writing sentences for the 20 seconds each picture is shown. This is a creative and fun way to get students to think on the spot using random pictures. Although I feel this would be a fun and creative way to get students thinking, I would be cautious using this because some of the pictures are tagged inaccurately. For example, I typed in fish as the tag and the second picture was a couple kissing. However, this might be a unique way to bring in slang and informal language. Kissing with a fish face?

"Make a newspaper clipping with your own headline and story. In example to surprise friends and coworkers, send a birthday greeting or to give your next blog entry a special look." This could be a creative way for students to summarize a story or a movie. They could use this tool to write a review including main ideas and a recommendation. The fact that it generates into a mock newspaper clipping is a fun and creative way to share their findings.

Instagram is another photo sharing program that, like Flickr, lets students upload and describe their own pictures, and browse other users' photos. Although not targeted towards L2 learners, it lends itself to the creative side of learning by letting students find pictures they're interested in and describing or writing about them.

Wordle isn't necessarily ESL focused, but it does do fun things with language. Teachers can use this application to create vocabulary word splashes that are visually appealing to students, or teachers can let students play with their own words. For example, students can input an essay and world will pick out the most frequent words and put them into a cool design. It's a simple and easy way to manipulate language.

Jena, I'm glad you posted this. I think that this has some great potential for introducing vocabulary in the pre- or -post phases of a lesson for different skills or content classes. I like that you can choose different fonts, # of words that can be displayed and the direction of displayed words. You can also embed this into blogs and wikis. For a good blog post on using word clouds in the classroom, you might want to check out Nic Peachey's post on this subject: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-word-clouds-in-efl-esl.html As an aside, in my opinion this guy is perhaps one of the most active technology/CALL ESL people on the web. I get a lot of great ideas from reading his blog posts and other resources.

This is very interesting.. It can be used by teachers of vocabulary and writing.. I like the fact that it can be used ina number of ways. Thanks Jena

It looks like the site busyteacher has lots of resources and links for...busy teachers. There are articles, worksheets, and links to seasonal activities. I'm posting this particular list of photo activities because (a) I think a lot of our students take pictures anyway and we could include them in the photo-gathering aspect of these projects, and (b) I think a lot of these activities can be adapted and incorporated into digital stories or grockit videos (or other CALL activities). Photo activities can provide context for teaching grammar or situational uses of language.