flynn089

Over the last couple of months I've been busy travelling round a bit and doing some face to face training and workshops. As part of the materials for these workshops I created a number of tasks for teachers which I hope will help develop their ability to use technology and to evaluate and create materials using web based tools. I've decide now to share those tasks so anyone who wants to use them to train other teachers or to develop their own skills can take advantage of and make good use of them. Capturing the art shark http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/1693491849/ There are ten tasks and they can be done in any order, except for the tenth one which should be last. Please feel free to use and share these tasks and by all means leave any comments or suggestions for improvement. I will also be hosting a teacher development week using and discussing these tasks and the related tools from 7th to 15th December 2009 on the SEETA Moodle site: http://www.seeta.eu/ so by all mean...

The importance of careful thought and reflection on what we do as both teachers and learners can not be overestimated in terms of the learning process and retaining information in a way that we can actually use it and make it part of our experience and practice. Keeping a teaching or learning journal can be a really important part of this process of reflection and writing entries can help us to reformulate what we have read or analyse our experiences and draw conclusions from them which we can later return to, share and reflect on again. For me Penzu is a really good tool which can help me and my students or trainee teachers to do this. How to create your learning journal Go to: https://penzu.com/ and click on ‘ Sign up ’. You will need to create a password and enter a username, email address and agree to the terms of use. Then you just click on ‘ Submit ’.  You can then start creating your journal entries by adding a text and title. Each entry is dated automatically and you can move...

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...

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...