flynn089

For years now I have been happily using EtherPad based services like http://primarypad.com/ and http://sync.in/ to get participants on the training courses I deliver to work collaboratively to create and peer edit texts. Increasingly though I've been having problems with the reliability of the free services these companies provide and the lack of reliable compatibility with mobile devices. At last it seems that now I have a very elegant solution in the form of https://quip.com/ . Quip looks a lot like Evernote and has a similar interface with documents contained in notebooks, but one of the big differences is that Quip was designed specifically to enable peer editing and collaboration on documents and has a very clear way of showing and tracking the changes. Here's a short tutorial showing you how it works: Why should we get our students peer editing? It improves their awareness of accuracy It can improve the quality of their writing Pushes students to accept that writing is ...

WordMagnets is a really useful tool that students can either use alone on a computer, or that you can use in class with a projector or IWB. Here's a short video showing you how to use it. You can download a copy of the video here and copy suitable for iPod here . WordMagnets is a simple tool that allows you to paste text into a field and then click a couple of times to change the text into word tiles a little like fridge magnets that you can drag and rearrange. Here's a text that I quickly copied in from an article about J. K. Rowling. I clicked on 'Next', then ignored the opportunity to change the background and clicked 'Next' again and I had these randomised word tiles that I could then drag to recreate the text. This is a great tool that has some really useful features. You can type in and add words to the text, or you can delete word tiles from the text by clicking on remove then clicking the words you want to get rid of. You can also change the colour and...

Yesterday on my Quick Shout blog, I wrote about a new tool called Xtranormal for creating text to speech animated movies. Since then I've had a little time to put together a tutorial video and think about how to use it in the classroom. First I thought I'd show you what extra normal produces. There is quite a range of characters and backgrounds so the possibilities for creating situational dialogues is terrific and you can also build these scenes into a series, so this would be great for longer projects too. Here's a quick look at how a movie is created. You can watch or download a higher quality version .mov here: Xtranormal tutorial Or download to i-tune / iPod: Xtranormal tutorial So how can we use this with our students? We can use it as a novel way to present language in context by creating small scenes for our students to watch. We can get our students to create dialogues for specific contexts. You could even give students specific tasks (Convince your partner that ...

Here's something that's fun for the weekend and beyond. A site with a collection of image and gif generators that you can customise with your EFL ESL students and add their texts to. This is an example one I created with talking flowers giving a warning about the environment. The site also offers talking squirrels Talking cats And a few other things like tomatoes , owls and a wizard . There's also a generator that helps you add a text to a packet of cigarettes and also a newspaper which I really like. It's really easy to do, you just add your text to a field and click the generate button. You can then either download your image or get an embed code to add it to a blog or website. So how do we use this with EFL ESL students? We can use the animal and vegetable animations to get students to express opinions about different topics we discuss. It can often be hard to motive students to do this and using a tool like this reduces their 'exposure'. We could get stud...

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...

One of the things that I really like about Second Life is the rich visual imagery and the creativity that many of the builders there have put into designing their Islands. We can exploit this along with the Second Life snapshot tool to create stimulating projects for our students. Here's a quick video showing you how to take a snapshot. Here's another showing you how to access and use the snapshot controls so that you can get better camera angles. So how do we use this with EFL ESL students? We can use this in a number of ways to enhance writing activities. Send a postcard activity - One of the options on the snapshot interface is to email the images we take to other people. When we do this we can add an email text telling them about the image or what we have found at that place etc. We can ask our students to imagine that this is a postcard to the class and to write about an imaginary holiday they are having. Photo journalist - We can send our students on photojournalism as...

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...

In my two previous features, I've looked at how to create a wiki and how to use them with EFL students . In this posting I'd like to look at a couple of technical aspects, how to embed video in the wiki and how to add hyperlinks, and how we can use them for teacher development. Let's start with the technical bit. Here are two video tutorials. The first shows how we can embed videos into a WetPaint wiki. To view this movie in a separate window click here Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie This second one shows how to use hyperlinks to link together text and pages across the wiki. To view this movie in a separate window click here Right click and the use 'Save as' to download a Quick Time version of this movie Wikis, through sites like Wikipedia.org have shown us what incredible power we have to create and share knowledge through the internet. We can also use the power of wikis for teacher development. ...

In this feature I want to share another tutorial that you can use with your students showing how to edit your wiki and have a look at a live demo wiki that you and your students can play around with. In my previous post I looked at how to create a wiki using WetPaint and a few of the reasons for using one. This tutorial shows you how simple it is to edit the wiki. As a demonstration I've set up a wiki using the Cinderella story so once you have had a look, by all means register and have a play around with this. View this tutorial in a separate window Download a QuickTime version of this tutorial (Right click and then 'Save as' ) So how can we use wikis with our students? You can upload student work for collaborative editing, though you should make sure they are comfortable with this first. If they aren't you could try uploading some other documents which need correcting or redrafting and get them to work on those instead. Get students to create a story collaborati...

In this feature I'd like to show you how to create your own free wiki using 'Wetpaint' and look at some of the reasons for using wikis to achieve educational goals. First, for those of you who don't know what a wiki is, here's a quick definition which comes from one of the most famous wikis, wikipedia.org . "A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content [ ...]. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites." So, what really differentiates a wiki from a normal website is the fact that anyone who has access to the site can modify its contents (this is often, though not always, restricted to people who create a login or register to use this feature), unlike a normal website, on which the content is usually edited only by the company or person who owns the website. To show you how easy it is to create your own free wiki, I've recorded these tutorial mov...

A Picture's Worth is a really wonderful site which collects together images with short essays (300 - 1000 words). It's based on the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. The pictures and essays are sent in by site visitors. There's a gallery section where you can browse all the images and essays which have been sent in, as well as a feature section which has some of the most popular images. There is also a link to Google Maps which will show you where the pictures have been taken. This isn't your average Web2.0 site. If you want to submit a picture and an essay you have to send it to the editor / site owner who decides if it is good enough These are some of my favourites. Nice story here about a pink VW Beetle As a contrast I also like this one of a ladybird, though as much for the story as the image How to use this with students Get them to start their own Picture's Worth. This could be a website that you put together or just with pictures and p...

This is the first in what I hope will become a series of tutorials on exploiting the teaching / learning potential of some of the more common desktop applications like MS Word. Like many people I’m a regular user of this application and it’s probably the one I use most, with the exception of my web browser. Despite the amount of time I have spent using it, I’m often surprised to discover another useful toolbar or technique that I can use to make life easier or my teaching more effective. This first tutorial shows how to use the ‘comments’ feature that can be found on the ‘Reviewing’ toolbar. The ‘comments’ feature allows you to add comments to the text of a document. These comments don’t appear in the text itself, but can be seen on screen whenever you hover the cursor over the part of the text that the comment refers to. To find out how it works, Watch a tutorial (450k Flash movie) What I like about it This tool enables me to start a dialogue with my students about their work on the...