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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...

Back in November 2008 I published Part 1 of a series of articles intended to explore the use of WebCams in education. I have now finally got round to writing Part 2 which is a collection of 20 activities EFL ESL teachers can do with their students. Here are some links to useful free video communication tools that you could use for these activities. MailVu is a simple to use app which runs in the browser and enables students to record a short message which can be sent by email. EyeJot is another simple video email app which also has a mobile version. Skype is of course the mainstream choice for synchronous communication. Oovoo is a Skype competitor which also enables the recording of video interviews by capturing both interviewer and interviewee. I want this ebook 20 WebCam Activities 1. Chinese - video dictation - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it thems...

This morning I spotted Solvr on MakeUseOf and decided to give it a try. Solvr is a free easy and interesting way to collaboratively brainstorm and attempt to solve problems online. It's very simple set up. You just got to http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/ type your problem into the field and then click 'Start' . You will then see your problem with a number of options underneath. You can add different elements of the problem, make suggestions by adding ideas and leave comments. The collaborative part comes in when you share the URL with someone, then other people can come and join in the problem solving and brainstorming. Here's the URL for the ' Making a living 'problem I set up. I also set up a problem earlier on today, which was about integrating technology into the ELT classroom. I added a couple of elements of the problem and then posted it to Twitter. With a few minutes, the problem started to develop as people added in comments solutions, and even sta...

For the last few days I've been playing with WallWisher a handy tool for creating online noticeboards that you can add sticky notes to. You can see a wall that I created here with some notes about Web 2.0 Tools for EFL ESL Teachers. It's very easy to create your own noticeboard, just click where it says 'Build a Wall' and you'll see a new wall with some options on it that you need to complete. Basically these are: Uploading an image Choosing colours Adding title and subtitle Creating your password Deciding who can see and add to your wall Once you have done this you just click the big 'Done' button and you are almost ready to start adding content to your wall. Before you start to add content you'll need to check your email account where you should find your password. Then you just log in to your wall and double click on the wall to start adding the sticky notes. The sticky notes are quite simple, you just add some text and you can either link to an image...

I've been aware of 280Slides for some time now, but haven't really tried to use it much as I'm a very keen user of Keynote on my MAC, but this week I was looking around for ways to get video type lessons online and discovered what an incredibly easy and useful tool 280Slides is for this. Basically 280Slides is an online tool for creating presentations. It works in a very simple way and has a very intuitive interface which is very quick to understand. It has a few basic themes and layouts and you can do all the usual things like adding text, shapes and images to your presentations. The two key areas though that I like about 280Slides are: 1. It's really easy to import and embed video into you presentation. Just click on the 'Movies' icon add a search term. Find your video and double click it and there it is in the the presentation. 2. It's really easy to share the presentations online. Just click on the 'Share' icon and you get the options to publis...

This is a really interesting site that I spotted a little while back. The site was inspired by the late great John Cage , one of the most revolutionary composers of the last century. The site is called P22 Music Text Composition Generator and you can find it at: http://p22.com/musicfont/ What the site does is to convert a written text into musical notation with a midi music file to play the notation. It's quite simple to do. You just copy and paste your text into the field, give it a file name (with no spaces or punctuation) choose the speed and instrumentation, then just click to generate the notation and midi file. Then you get a printable copy of your notation and a midi music file that you can download and play. I copied and pasted this blog text in and generated this music file with it. Music Aiding Text Memory Well I can hear people thinking; "What's this got to do with language teaching?" and that's a really good question, so here's how this 'migh...

This series of postings are the result of a training presentation I was asked to deliver for Moroccan teachers of English in Kinitra on 15th December 08. To prepare the session I looked back at many of the postings from my blogs over the last 18 months and thought about some of the changes that have been taking place in the way online video sharing has developed. I've split the materials from the session into four sections. Online Video: For Language Development Online Video: As Communication Online Video: As Knowledge Resource Online Video: Authentic Genres These are by no means conclusive. With the spread of broadband access the potential for education and for language teaching and development and autonomous teacher development is huge, but still as yet largely under exploited as the discussion that followed my session highlighted. Some of the potential problems we highlighted were: Inappropriate content Dead links Teacher preparation time Blocked sites Lack of connectivity Anywa...