Listening dictations

While having a look at Bob Palmer´s blog ELTportal and exploring his links, I found out this site which is perfect for listening.

Listen and Write - Dictation via kwout

It´s called Listen and Write and has various authentic listenings in different levels. Students listen to it and try to rewrite the sentences spoken.

Another wonderful place for listening is THIS ONE where you listen to specific lines from movies and have to unscramble the words given at the bottom. It´s great fun!
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/michel.barbot/hotpot/movies.htm

Dead Poets' Society (1) dps1.mp3 via kwout

Anglesonline is another great source for listening practise but this time with images. You watch scenes and answer comprehension questions. CLICK on the icon CINEMA and you´ll be able to see activities for different levels.

English Online France - offers various listening dictations I`d like to mention here.

English Online France - Movie Trailers: Free EFL / ESL Listening exercises via kwout

English Online France - TV Commercials: Free ESL/EFL listening exercises via kwout

You can find

• Beginner dictations
• Telephone expression dictations
• student´s introductions
• TV commercials
• Fairy tales dictations
  
• and so on

And finally, elllo.org (elllo , yes three Ls). At elllo you can find mixers (6 different speakers talk about the same topic), interviews, listening games, talking points ...
Enough listening for a life time. If you have an interactive board try one of the listening games in class, students love it.

SKY News

I´ve just discovered that Sky News provides embeddable news reports. I see great potential in using this in class blogs. Have a look at the video below. Imagine students could watch it and answer comprehension questions or even discuss the topic. In order to get the embed code,click on the play button, then on menu, embed, copy to clipboard and you´ve got the code to publish the video in your blog. So simple!

A blog to help teachers create their own blogs

I´d like to share a blog I created last year in order to train teachers at the school I work at. We had two workshops in which I introduced them to the basics of blogging. I created the blog in order to provide them with written instructions they could refer to later on and repeat the tasks we developed during the workshop.
http://bloggingteachers.blogspot.com/

I learned a lot about blogging reading tutorials, asking people questions and trying out stuff. I guess if you like reading and are really interested in trying out blogging, the BLOGGINGTEACHERS blog might be helpful. It gives detailed instructions on how to start a blog, how to add pictures, audio, chat boxes and other widgets.

The week / year in pictures

I was reading the blog Free technology for teachers when I came across this wonderful idea for using images. MSNBC has published some slideshows featuring the most important facts which happened during the week and I thought this activity could be really interesting for EFL learners as well.

Why not show some slideshows as an example and then ask sts to make their own slideshows using pictures or cartoons featuring "The week in my life" or "The year in my life" or even "The year in my country"? That would be interesting.

Christmas message

I´ve made two Christmas messages this year. One using Outshouts and the other using Animoto , inspired by Carla Arena´s Christmas message. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and may God grant us wonderful moments in 2009.

This one is from outshouts. You choose a video you would like to send and record an introductory message using your webcam. It´s really fun.



http://animoto.com/play/hINIOtVYSVQ93C1yW1S1RQ/greetings/holidays2008

Edmodo tutorial

I was meaning to make a tutorial in order to help colleagues to see how edmodo works and I tried utipu but unfortunately I couldn´t manage to see the video I had recorded. The feature from utipu which interested me is the possibility to easily send the video to youtube. ADVANTAGE: can send tutorial to youtube. DISADVANTAGE: have to download program to your computer and :( couldn´t see the video I recorded.

Then, I decided to try screencast-o-matic to make the tutorial.
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjlqhcnBd