Life Feast

This is my personal blog and an attempt to try different ideas on blogging. I´m very interested in learning and my personal project is to learn how to use internet tools to enrich my classes and offer variety to my students.

This is the original article written by Larry Ferlazzo.

I found the AUDIO SLIDESHOW GALLERY a wonderful site to practise listening. It´s a different way of listening with the help of images. The slideshows summarize key news events. Thinking of Brazilian EFL Learners I would advise this activity to high-intermediate + advanced learners.

http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/audiogalleries

Audio Slideshow Gallery | Reuters via kwout

Next trial was an online Karaoke SINGSNAP.COM. I had so much fun. So, bear with my voice. I decided to sing "The Scientist" by Coldplay.

First, you run the setup wizard which is very straightforward, then, you select the song you´d like to sing and finally just gather up your courage and let your voice out. It takes some time while the site sends your recording.

Making sts sing and record their voices isn´t easy but if you teach a song to a group, find one or two who are more keen on singing and have them hold the microphone in class while the whole class sings with them, this way, I think it could be done. Yes, it´s great pronunciation practice and much fun.




The next site is great for reading + listening practice. These are simplified news stories with listenings or video plus a recording with the pronunciation of new words, a memory game with new words + definitions, and more exercises. REALLY GOOD!



The everyday life project is FANTASTIC. It´s great for listening and reading practice. By solving everyday problems, interacting with the lesson, and making your choices, you end up learning a lot. There are good lessons for people teaching topics such as FOOD, MONEY, COMPUTERS and WORK.

I´ve found Spezify via a tweet and liked what I saw. Once you type a word in Spezify, it shows you the results of your search by bringing images from youtube, blogs, flickr, twitter, images and the web in general.

I´ve just found this voicethread created by SecondLifeEnglish in Youtube and wanted to share with you. He talks about really useful tools he uses to learn languages. Plan to get some of the tools myself.

From the wonderful "Ideas to Inspire" site , this is a presentation about 66 videos you can use in the classroom and suggested activities. Found it interesting and wanted to share here.



9 ideas to use the webcam in the classroom

It´s AMAZING what you can do with http://prezi.com . As other presenters, I had always used powerpoint to prepare my presentations but I´ve always wanted more. I GUESS I´VE FOUND what I was looking for. Instead of preparing a linear presentation with a series of slides (and then have to go forward and backward) you can create a map + path for your presentation. You can zoom in and out as you like, add many sorts of files ( pictures, videos, texts) and add movement and surprise to your talk.

CHECK THIS OUT



I can´t recall how I found this amazing tool and am dying to try it out. After watching some tutorials I guess I´m ready to give it a go.

WATCH THIS

MY PRESENTATION: Web tools and projects

Carla has always been an inspiration to me. The more opportunities I have working with her, the more I see how much ground I still have to cover. I´d like to share her wonderful presentation at the Braz-tesol regional chapter which I still haven´t had the chance to really cover (each tool). Learn from the master (Carla) and enjoy.

I´ve bookmarked Shwup recently and was waiting for a chance to try it out. There are many other sites which do the same but what is different about Shwup is that you can invite other people to contribute to the photo album with pictures they´ve taken and then you can create a photo album with all the photos taken, make a slideshow or movie, get a link and also post it at facebook , orkut or many other sites.

So. what´s SHWUP?



My Muvee



It´s a pity the quality of the photos have deteriorated in the little film. WHY?

This is a video which makes fun of the way English teaching videos used to be in the past, extremely unnatural and absurd. Had fun watching it.

I´d like to thank Sue Waters for this wonderful post and the idea of integrating your blog to your facebook account. I had never even thought it was possible. I know many of my facebook friends don´t know of my blog so this is a great opportunity to share what you´ve been writing with your friends.

Sue Waters has written a very clear tutorial on HOW TO DO IT so just click on the TEXT BOX below and you´ll be taken to her blog THE EDUBLOGGER