Last week, some colleagues of mine asked for help. They wanted to learn how to use windows movie maker to create projects I´ve been sharing in our edmodo group.
After a quick workshop last Friday, one of them suggested I make a tutorial so that more teachers would learn how to use it. Well, windows movie maker can be found at most windows based computers, if you don´t have one it can be downloaded from the internet.
This is a simple tutorial I`ve made showing how to add images, audio, titles, etc. http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/25122
Just below you´ll find some example videos I´ve created to use with my students.
Example videos:
- Types of films : for presentation and practice
- Video Quiz: films based on novels
- Dialogue: Eating out - students created dialogues, recorded their roleplay and teacher added the images.
- Daily routine: students mime actions. We used the video for practice.
- Past Grammar Tenses: students created sentences and drawing.
- Phrasal Verbs: students created pictures for sentences from an exercise and were recorded reading the sentences.
The Crazy Professor Reading Game is a reading technique which helps students see meaning in the words they´re reading. Students become active as they move their hands and read dramatically. Honestly, when I saw the video I wished I were in that classroom as a student, learning and having fun w/ them.
The steps are:
ask sts to read the text aloud to themselves (dramatically).
sts read again using their hands to represent what they are reading.
pairs ask questions to each other about the text.
One st is the crazy professor and the other is the eager student. The teacher really wants to teach (summarize the text) and the student really wants to learn.
Just found this great site via @joaoa (which found via @NikPeachey )and decided to share with you. With FONTSELF, you can type a text, select from a great variety of FONTS , grab the embed code and use the text in your blog.
If you´d like to bring colour to your posts, try FONTSELF.
I've always wanted to parachute but never had the guts. Well, now I've just made up my own "PRETENDING VIDEO" . It's true it looks kind of strange but it's good for the laugh.YOu can e-mail the link to someone, embed it in you blog or even download the video to your own computer in order to show to your friends. http://memeo.madeupmemories.com/?mId=35543745
This morning, as I tried to log into my yahoo mail, NOTHING, I just got a blank page as an answer to my click. Am I the only one having this problem? Is it my computer? Is it my internet connection?
Well, thanks to twitter search I could see the raging crowd . Everyone is having the same problem.
It's interesting to notice how quickly we can learn about the world with twitter search now. If you're travelling to Chile and want to know how things are going, search for the tweets mentioning Chile and observe what people are saying. This same week , my husband travelled to the south of Argentina and is planning to go to Torres del Paine in Chile. There I was again using Twitter search.
I ´ve been searching for interesting web tools I can use to develop projects with students for EASTER and these are some of the ideas I had. We can ask students to create some easter messages, record them and send the greeting cards to their parents. We can also share the links to all cards created in a wallwisher.
TOKBOX - create a video greeting card with the pre-set backgrounds. Click on send video message, then below your webcam image, click on GREETINGS, click on the arrow next to mother´s day and you´ll find easter.
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.
PROCEDURE:
Pairs of students created a question they would like to ask Cara (the American girl). We had 6 questions.
I used my tokbox accountto record my students asking Cara their questions and sent her the video message via e-mail.
Cara received the video message and replied using the same tool "Tokbox".
I shared her video with my students via EDMODO ( a communication tool we use daily).
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.
