Monthly Archives: December 2009
Digital Drawing
Luckily with the advent of Web 2.0 tools drawing is a very simple task for teachers. In less than 5 minutes I was able to draw a Picasso head.
Sketchfu allows you to create very colourful sketches in seconds. Take a look at a sketchfu I created for one of my Wikis.
Crayola offers a beautiful online drawing and painting site for young learners. You will have to use your imagination and choose the best Crayola product for your piece of Art.
It´s fun to learn vocabulary
VocabAhead is a very interesting website because learning vocabulary can be FUN.
We help students in building and expanding their vocabulary. We help and support educators in teaching vocabulary. We eat, drink and breathe vocabulary! So our team decided that the name of our website should portray what we enjoy doing most and that is of course, helping everyone with their vocabulary. So, that is the reason we are changing the name of the website from WordAhead to VocabAhead.
English Central is an ideal website to learn vocabulary and at the same time enhance your listening skills. First login to be able to choose from the wide range of categories. There are different levels therefore choose the video that best fits your English level. Listen to the videos with the subtitles and then record your voice.
Spin and Spell is a very visual website ideal for young learners to improve their vocabulary skills. There is a basic set of words you can choose from Transport, Clothes, Food, House and Animals. The wheel will spin if you are able to write correctly the picture you clicked on.
How can students learn all these new words? You can use a cool tool called The Spelling Wizard
Students have to type in 10 new words and they can choose between these two games on how they want to practice the spelling of the new vocabulary they learned.
Visual Search Engines
Currently I am giving an ICT Teacher Training course for Teachers of English. Most of the them use Google as their favourite search engine. As a google fan I really find google to be an excellent tool for teachers but the web is becoming image and video based. Therefore I would to show different ways of searching for information through Visual Search Engines. Below you will find a list of the most common ones.
Kartoo: You can create visual map where related results are linked between them.
Oskope: is a visual search assistant that lets you browse and organize items from Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo!Image
Amazon, Ebay, Flickr, Fotolia, Yahoo!Image Search and YouTube in an intuitive way
Viewzi: With Viewzi, you can get results from Google, Yahoo!, and dozens of other great places–all arranged into unique “Views”, each custom-tailored for that content.
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Eyeplorer: It is still in beta. Aims at radically improving the way users interact with knowledge and information online.
TouchGraph:is more precisely a visualization tool (Java-based) for exploring connections between related websites.
To integrate ICT: the journey of a teacher
Currently I am working in two different schools in the Northern area of Buenos Aires. I feel blessed to be able to teach using the Smartboard in one of the schools. This smartboard was a donation made by one of the parents 4 years ago and I was the first one to use it in the classroom.
As you all know I love technology not only because I consider it a never ending learning process but I have learned throughout the years that it is not the technology what is important but what you do with it.
When the class finished the students left saying:
Miss thank you very much for this class.
We had a great time.
I will tell everybody about this class.
It was great to listen to songs in the classroom and learn so many new words visually.
Bottom line. They were happy. I haven´t felt a class so happy for such a long time.
What are educators missing? What is happening to the traditional classroom? What will happen when these girls have to face other classes were this technology is not being used? What happens if they don´t want to continue learning in the traditional way?
Teaching Vocabulary using Web 2.0 tools
Next year I will continue using the Smartboard in the classroom therefore I have been doing some research on how to enhance my students to learn vocabulary in a different way.
In this site you must write down a phrase and Phrasr will look for the images that match it
http://www.pimpampum.net/phrasr/index.php
Creating animated vocabulary
http://www.gifup.com/
Students can search the meaning of a words that is in a video and they can also upload different meaning to this dictionary.
This is one of the many funny and intertaining games offered by
http://www.wordcentral.com/games.html
TESOL Electronic Village
It is with great pleasure that I would like to spread the word about EVO Sessions. This year I will be co-moderating Multiliteracies session together with a wonderful team Vance Stevens, Dennis Oliver and Nina Liakos. I became a Webhead in 2006 and since then have been moderating different EVO sessions.
The CALL Interest Section of the international TESOL professional association is pleased to offer the opportunity to participate in the Electronic Village Online (EVO) 2010 sessions. This is a professional development project and virtual extension of the TESOL 2010 Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. The intended audience for this project includes both TESOL 2010 participants and those who can participate only virtually.
You do not need to be a TESOL member to participate in a free, six-week, wholly online session of the EVO, Jan 11 -Feb 21, 2010.
Please visit our Announcement Web page to select one among the various offerings.
Web tools for teachers
Next week I must give a Teacher Training course on how to use Web tools to enhance teaching and learning. There is ample evidence that many of these tools motivate digital native students.
I have done some research that I would like to share with you.
You will find several interesting tools you can use in the classroom. Tools are easy to download and the instructions are very clear and simple.
Sue LeBeau has a wonderful website offering an enormous variety of tools for our classroom. These tools range from Quiz Generators, Worksheets & Flashcards, Games and Puzzles, Certificates & Charts, Forms, Surveys & Calenders, Miscellaneous Tools, Templates for the classroom, Places to post homework and Bookmarks. We can spent weeks discovering new ideas for our classroom!!!
In this site be ready to explore endless possibilities for you classroom. Below I copied all the different sites you can explore.
I use technology without a computer in the classroom
This year I have been doing a thorough research on how to teach digital natives. At one of the school where I am currently working they allowed me to integrate technology. I have been struggling for years to show the potential we have as teachers to use different kind of technology in the classroom. Amazingly I teach technology without a computer in the classroom and as there is no wi-fi I can´t bring my laptop.
The group was very special as most of them were really keen on integrating technology but to my surprise they were not ready to face the challenges of becoming a 21st century student. They had to learn netiquette rules as well as the several online tools we constantly used.
I created two online spaces. One for Senior 1 www.englishhub.ning.com and one for Middle 3 www.englishwithtechnology.com
They took a survey after using our Ning for two months. The results were very positive and it was very good to have a different channel of communication. Some complained that they didn´t want the Ning to be compulsory.
Take a look at a video I created by one of my students
Featured Avatizers
Browsing through the Internet I found this interesting Web 2.0 application that allows me to add different features to my Twitter avatar.
