Life Feast

One more time TOKBOX has proved to be a great tool.

My upper-intermediate students had just learned vocabulary related to education and I told them I knew a girl their age who studies in the States and we could ask her some questions about education in the US.

1. Pairs of students created a question they would like to ask Cara (the American girl). We had 6 questions.
2. I used my tokbox account to record my students asking Cara their questions and sent her the video message via e-mail.
3. Cara received the video message and replied using the same tool "Tokbox".
4. I shared her video with my students via EDMODO ( a communication tool we use daily).

Watch the video where they ask the questions:


TokBox - Free video chat and video messaging

And this was Cara´s reply. The girl on the left is my daughter who is living in the US as an exchange student and Cara is her host sister.


TokBox - Free video chat and video messaging

Students interview native speaker (TOKBOX)

I always found it hard to memorize phrasal verbs and the only way that worked for me was contextualising  and associating them to images.

This week, my FCE group had a gap-fill exercise they had to complete with phrasal verbs. I knew many of the phrasal verbs were unfamiliar to them then this is what came up ...

PRESENTATION:  I presented the phrasal verbs with paper flashcards with a phrasal verb on each one and asked a student a question with the phrasal verb. If the student/ s didn´t understand the meaning (of the phrasal verb) then I would explain it.

PRACTICE: I used the same flashcards to drill the pronunciation of the phrasal verbs. Then, we practised a bit more with virtual flashcards created with QUIZLET http://quizlet.com/1878547/familiarize/

PERSONALIZATION:  I asked students to form pairs and stand up, one student facing the board and the other had the back to the board. Using the e-board, I make a page with all the phrasal verbs but used the spotlight tool  to focus on one phrasal verb at a time. As I focussed on a phrasal verb, the student facing the board had to ask his partner a question w/ that specific verb, the other st answered the question and they changed places for the next verb.

CONSOLIDATION/ MEMORIZATION: I showed my students a stick figure drawing I had made to represent a sentence "I look up to my dad."  so that they could see a simple drawing can represent an idea. I gave each student a sentence , taken from the coursebook exercise they would do next, and asked them to draw a simple image for each sentence. After the drawings were made, I recorded each student reading their sentence. Then, the drawings passed from hand to hand so that they could see each other drawings. I collected the drawings against their will (students wanted to keep the drawings so I had to promise to give them back next class) in order to add the images to their voices in a little video.

EXERCISE: students completed the exercise in the course book very easily.

During the whole activity, there were moments of laughter, one when they were drawing and the other when they saw each other pictures. I heard comments like "Cute", "wow, this is a good one."

REVISION: next class, I intend to show them the video and recap the meaning of each phrasal verb.

Memorizing Phrasal Verbs

If you use New English File Intermediate with your students, you might find this song activity useful.

In unit 2B, students read a text about people who changed their life style.

This is a song activity I´ve created to use w/ my intermediate students:



SONG ACTIVITY – Intermediate (EF – file 2B- “Changing your life” )

Just do it (Copacabana Club)

1.  Ask students to discuss in pairs what we can change in our lives.
2.  Debriefing: brainstorm w/ the group what we can change in our lives and write prompts on the board. 
3.  Ask students to select and copy 8 words from the board.
4.  Play the song and ask students to tick any similar word they hear in the song . (Play the part that starts w/ “You can change …”
5.  Play the song again , stopping to check the right words.
6.   Pairs discuss “What would you like to change in your life?”

Song Activity : Just do it (Changing your life)

Let me share another great site I've just learned about via Andressa Cardoso in her blog "Words and Ideas"

With WHAT2LEARN you can create customizable games for your courses. You can create anagrams, hangmans, word searches, multiple choices and question and answers and questions.

Check some examples I created with simple clicks:

- a hangman with vocabulary from English File Intermediate Unit 1A

http://www.what2learn.com/games/play/24793/
Play this game on the what2learn site

- a wordsearch for my Upper Intermediate students.

Play this game on the what2learn site

You can also add these games to your powerpoint presentations. Watch Andressa's tutorial to learn how to do it. Thanks for sharing, Andressa.

Creating games with WHAT2LEARN

While reading my twitter, I noticed a Retweet by Shelly Terrell and discovered wonderful posters created by Sílvia Tolisano writer of the amazing "Langwitches" Blog.

Sílvia created these posters in order to show in A VISUAL WAY what SKILLS  we´re really teaching when integrating new technology in our classes.



Quoting her (Sílvia Tolisano)

These are some of her POWERFUL POSTERS:

 When podcasting our students LEARN:























Read two of her very interesting posts:

• It´s not about the tools. It´s about the skills.
• We podcasted today! So did you learn ANYTHING?

Web2.0 posters by Langwitches

If someone asks you for help, and you keep on giving them instructions but still that doesn't help, sometimes you wish you could see their screen in order to spot what's wrong , right?

Well, some weeks ago , I bookmarked a site I found in Orli's great  GO2WEB20  blog and was saving it for the right moment, which happened today. A friend of mine was trying to explain to me how to update a blog by clicKing on a button and I couldn't find the "so-called" button. I remembered I had the right tool to help me, "Showmewhat'swrong" .

I found the link, send it to my friend, Camila Sousa, she recorded her screen showing me how to do it and I was e-mailed 5 minutes later with her screencast. No subscription needed, no log ins, nothing. GREAT!!!! Solved my problem.

This is a DEMO of SHOWMEWHATSWRONG. Hope you can make use of it some day, like I did.

What's wrong? Can you help me?

Yesterday, February 06, I gave one more online workshop to a group of teachers I've been training at the Cultura EDtech online course. I talked about Edmodo features and how some teachers have been using it with students.





You can view the RECORDED session by clicking on the links below:

Part 1 - http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/252851-edmodo-in-depth
Part 2 - http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/254296-edmodo

The session is part of the Cultura Edtech  Course, an online course for EFL / ESL teachers who wish to begin exploring blogs and  webtools with some help. It's a 3-month course where teachers carry out weekly tasks in order to learn about technology integration with classroom activities.

If you're interested, the next group starts in March 2010. Send me an e-mail to anamariacult@yahoo.com.br and I'll send you more information.
http://anamariacult.glogster.com/cultura-edtech/

Wiziq session - EDMODO in Depth

Yesterday, I invited several teachers who have TOKBOX accounts to help me test the group video chat feature.

I created a video chat and invited teachers who were online in TOKBOX to join me. We were six people in the room. We could see (via webcam) and hear each other. I´ve read somewhere that you can video chat w/ up to 20 people.

We introduced ourselves, talked about where we live and teach, talked about our goals for 2010 and brainstormed ways we could use the group video chat w/ students.

You might say " I can video chat w/ my friends in MSN or Skype." Not really, with MSN and Skype you can chat to various people at the same time but you can´t see their webcam image. And you can only chat to people who have an MSN account or Skype account.

With Tokbox group video chat , you can VIDEO CHAT  to many people at the same time, whether they have a tokbox account or not. You can invite people to join you via TWITTER, FACEBOOK or even send the link of the video chat to your friends via e-mail.

The webcam images were very good and so was the sound. Except  for some voice delay, it was almost perfect. I regret not having taken a screenshot of our chat room. But I completely forgot about it.

How to create a GROUP VIDEO CHAT? Watch this quick TUTORIAL



How can we use this tool with students?

• invite students to have online conversation lessons.
• if you have individual private students, you can invite all of them on one specific day to join the room and talk to each other. 
• you can invite all your students to join you and interview a guest. Then, each student would have the chance to ask a question.
• Any other ideas?
  

TOKBOX - group video chat

A colleague of mine asked me about Quizlet and StudyStack and I have to say I like both. However, there are features in QUIZLET that I love.

Afte watching several tutorials in youtube about the site, I decided to make one myself showing the different ways you can use it with the Interactive White Board (IWB).

http://screenr.com/Kc1 (very good image quality)




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