flynn089

I spend a lot of time looking at different web-based tools and apps and thinking about if and how they can be used for learning. Sometimes it takes some thought and at other times it’s really obvious. With Phraseum it was instantly obvious that this was a really great tool for learning. Phraseum allows you to collect words, phrases and sentences from anywhere on the web while you you browse and organise them into social phrasebooks. Phraseum is a browser-based tool which can be activated from your browser toolbar. Simply create an account and then drag the ‘Clipping button’ bookmarklet to your favourites bar on your browser. Once that’s done you can just collect any words or phrases that you find online by highlighting them and then clicking on the bookmarklet. This opens up a window where you can add tags to the phrase and add your own private notes and annotations. The tags could be a definition, translation, part of speech or something about the context in which it could be used....

I've always found wise (and sometimes not so wise) quotes really useful, both within the classroom with students and as a way of introducing a topic when writing materials. I've used lots of different websites to find quotes over the years, but iWise is certainly about to become my new favourite as it seems to have taken wise quotes to a new level. You can search for quotes by keyword, look at quotes of the day, browse quotes by topic or just click for a random quote. That isn't all, iWise is compatible with Twitter and allows you to re-tweet quotes or subscribe to and follow tweet feeds from your favourite sources of wisdom. If you decide to search by topic etc, it even pulls in tweets from Twitter too. So how about some quote activities with our EFL ESL students? Here are some suggestions: Get students to find a random quote and translate it into their own language or find a parallel quote in their own L1. Collect 8 - 10 quotes on a similar topic and get students to dis...

For a long time now I've really admired and been fascinated by the work of Amanita Design . They have a really unique approach and I love the way they blend photographic textures with cartoon images. I also find their games quite addictive and that's I quality I always look for when trying to find stimulating materials for students, so I've been looking at how these games could used for language development. The two games I've chosen for this posting are Samorost 1 and Samorost 2 Samorost 1 is based on the scenario of an asteroid heading towards a planet. The player has to click various elements of the screen and find out how to help Samorost change the direction of the asteroid and save his planet. In Samorost 2, Somorost's dog is stolen by aliens and the player has to help Samorost rescue the dog. So why use these games with EFL ESL students These games are fascinating and very engaging. They are quite mentally challenging and help students to develop analytical...

Earlier this week I posted a short article to my Quick Shout blog about a new site called Virsona that enables teachers and students to develop their own AI ( Artificial Intelligence) chat bots. Since then I have been trying the site a bit more, developing tutorials and thinking about how we can use it with our EFL ESL students. To get an idea of what a 'chat bot' is, got to this page and start asking Abraham Lincoln some questions: http://www.virsona.com/ecchat.aspx?cvid=212 The chat bot has beeen programmed with lots of information about Abrham Lincoln and each time you enter a question the bot searches it's log and tries to match key words from your question with its log information. This all sounds very compicated, but the site actually makes it quite simple to create your own bot which can either be yourself, a fictional character or a historical or real person. The students can add information to their chat bot in a number of ways: Write diary log entries Email in...

I've just discovered Wordle , which is a really useful site for creating word clouds. The word clouds are created by entering either a text, URL or del.icio.us user name into a field. The site then generates a word cloud based on the frequency of key words in the text or webpage. Here's what a word cloud based on the URL of this blog looks like. The word clouds are really easy to create and can be printed up for classroom use or saved to a gallery on line. To see how this is done watch the tutorial movie below. How to create a Wordle word cloud You can download a higher quality Quicktime version here (Right click and the 'Save as') Or download for i-pod / i-Tunes here How to use this with EFL ESL students This is a wonderful flexible tool to use with students. Revision of texts - You can paste in short texts that your students have studied recently. Show them the word cloud and see if they can remember what the text was about and how the words were used within the tex...

Well I never thought I'd say this, but I've become a fan of microblogging ! I have to say that it's mainly because of Plurk . When I first saw Twitter some time back I couldn't really understand what all the fuss was about. I had a look at a few 'twitterers' sharing such information as what they had for lunch or that they were washing their hair and decided there are levels of detail at which information stops being informative - if you know what I mean. Anyway, as the Twitter phenomenon continued to grow and other players joined the market I decided to give it another try. At the beginning of June I started a Twitter vs Plurk comparison . Now almost 6 weeks later, I have to say that for me Plurk has come out as a clear winner. Watch this demo to see why. Here's a quick demo of Plurk and some of the features. To view the demo in a new window click here (2.7Mb) Download the demo as Quicktime movie (4Mb) Download the movie for i-pod (5Mb) What I lik...

This is a really handy little tool which is doing the rounds at the moment. It's called CuePrompter and it's an online Teleprompter. For those not in the know, a Teleprompter is a tool used by news readers, TV presenters etc to help them remember their lines. They read it from above the camera. This one is very simple to use and you simply cut and paste your text into the field, choose screen size, text size and colours and click a button and you are off. Once you have your text up on the screen you can then choose the speed that the text moves at and also do a few interesting things like having the text reverse or having the text as a mirror image! This video shows you how it is done How to use this with students This could be really useful to push your students reading speed and gist reading. Many students find it very difficult not to focus on every word of a text and get stuck when words come up that they don't know. With a tool like this, you can literally force the...