Wiki experience

In the last post I told you what a wiki is, and I added some links for you to see some examples of what people is doing. Now I'd like to share with you my own thoughts about my wiki adventure.

I have to say that I had never used wikis before. Although it is similar to a blog, It was a little bit difficult to me. There were too many things to learn: how to embed videos, pictures or widgets and how to order them to make the wiki visually attractive (which is very important if you are using it for educative purposes).

Once you know how a wiki works, it turns into a very useful tool for your lessons. First of all you can get your students' collaboration encouraging teamwork. Besides, All the students have the same opportunity to contribute to the creation of the website and share their knowledge You also get your students motivated by using new technologies and offering them a new way of learning. Moreover your students develop writing skills and social skills.

Maybe now you are thinking 'what about disadvantages?'. Well I can't think of many disadvantages... Perhaps that you need internet connectivity to use it, and an internet connection is not always available or that information can become untidy. However, it's not a big deal.

The next question that may arise is ' How can I use a wiki in class?'. After visiting wikis, and looking for examples of educational wikis, I've realised that a wiki have too many uses. For example, you can create presentations and study guides. Your students can also share notes and give feedback. Students can perform debates or use it for the project proposed in class. It has hundreds of utilities, Just be imaginative!!!

See you next time!

Wiki Wiki Wiki

Hi everyone!! Here I am again. Today, I'd like to talk about wikis. I didn't know what a wiki is o what it is for, but once you've learnt about it, you realise that it is a useful tool for teaching and get your students motivated.

Before showing you some examples of wikis that are already in use, let's discover what a wiki is. A wiki is a website that can be edit by lots of users from different computers, that is to say, they are collaborative websites. Here you have some examples:

TCLworkshop. Using wikis in classroom: This wiki offers you a complete guide to the wiki world. It explains you what a wiki is, what you can do with a wiki, how you create and edit a wiki and so many useful information. Only people from the TCL Workshop course can edit, and they must be members of the space. In this case , the wiki is being used as a course management system.

Teacher collaboration: This wiki has been created by pre-k teachers of Louisville Academy to collaborate on curriculum development, lesson planning, and Working on the Work. So, as you must already know, not everybody can edit. The wiki is protected. However, it can give you some ideas about themes to include in your English class.

Uses of Mind mapping in education: The creator of this wiki allows everybody to edit it. Everybody can access to the available information (Mind Mapping Software), but you can also make comments on it. It is a way of trying to put ideas together and to know the experience of people using this software.

You can find more examples on this web!!!

Now, I'd like to tell you about widgets. Wikis also use embeds, the same as blogs. I'm using some of them now, and I think it's worth having a look at them:

Schooltube: It's just like YouTube, but it is made by students. They upload videos about many topics: music, cooking, history, films... Maybe you must encourage your students to make a film and uploading it. I'm sure they'll love it. You just have to register your school and start working on it.

Voice-thread: You can make your students speak English with each other easily. Students discuss over images or videos, so it creates very funny debates among students. They'll have a good time creating short slideshows and recording their voice on it. You need to be logged into this website to use it

Wordle: This website is used to create funny and imaginative posters and embed them on your own web (or wiki). You just have to write the text you want to convert into a kind of poster, so it is very easy to use. You can choose the color, the type of font, the position of the words... So creative.

Again, here you have a link in which you can found other embeds.

Thank you for your attention, and see you soon!

Google

Today I'd like to talk about the educational use of Google tools. But before explaining what Google tools are, I'd like you to have a look at two interesting articles I've found in Google scholar:

The first one is called Vocabulary Learning and Speaking Activities. This article provides ideas to teach vocabulary through speaking activities (retelling, role plays...) It also explain you how to create worksheets to offer the students opportunities to learn new vocabulary, but also to use it.
The second one is a research on Teaching English It is is quite interesting since it gives you many points of view and study results about teaching English as a second language.

Now, as I've said at the beginning, I want to speak about Google tools. Maybe you already know about them, but I think it is quite interesting to have a look at them:

• Blogs: I'm sure you know what blogs are, so I don't need to explain anything about them. However, I'd like to say that they are so useful in an educational context since you create a communicational space to use with students where you can share ideas, activities or anything you think that is significant for them to know connected with the topics they're studying in class.
• Calendar: It's an online calendar you can share with students or teachers. Maybe your students are not very organised or maybe they are but they forgot to write down the nest exam date, so you can help them with this device. They'll be able to see assignment deadlines, school holidays, exam dates.... Incredibly helpful!
• Docs: This tool allows learners to work and collaborate online in real time. And you don't need to go home to work on it, you just have to use a computer with an internet connection
• Page creator: Perhaps you know how to create a web page without this gadget, nevertheless If you can't, don't worry. Google page creator will help you to create web page in a easy way and without being an engineer or a computer specialist!!! So now you can build your own English, Maths, Science or whatever web page.
• Groups: As it name suggests, if we make use of this tool we'll create groups. But what kind of groups? Discussion groups! So we can make online debates. Moreover we can communicate with our students easily outside the classroom.
• Google notebook: An online notebook for you not to forget about anything. You can share with other teachers or students if you want to...
• Picassa: A device that allow you to find pictures on your computer from different folders. Useful to do slide-shows.

As you can see, there are many tools on Google we, teachers, can use to make our lessons more attractive and to motivate our students!

This is not the end of the post today!!! Why don't you have a look to some books I’ve found on the net???

If you don't feel like reading books about teaching English because they are so serious, just have a look to 'Teaching English as a Foreign Language for Dummies'.  

Another book you should have a look to is The Dark Side of Google by Ippolita. We know Google tools are very good but we also must know what is bad about Google...

Wait for my next post, please! And thanks for reading!!!

Interesting Blogs

Today, I'm going to talk about some blogs I've been looking  at:
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Let's start with Larry Ferlazzo's blog. This is a very good blog for teachers. It has an easy-to-follow  presentation. Everything is so organised that you can read old pots easily and go to other links he considers useful (and they really are!!!) only by clicking the underlined words. For example, you should have a look to Moments in daily life around the world , since it can be used to talk about different cultures in English.
Moreover you can also read articles A very fascinating one (at least for me) is "When a good class goes bad (and back to good again)".
He also provides what he consider the best sites to practice English or sites for students to debate... A very useful blog, just have a look at it!

Another blog that can be useful is Eugenio's blog. Here you'll find lots of activities that you can use  in your English lesson. However, I think that these activities are for primary students and not for secondary students. So if you are a primary teacher this is your site!
In spite of being resources for primery school, we all should have a look to the links he offers. For instance, the one called warmer and films activities, in which you can find some fine ideas for your lessons.
In my opoinion, Although is a good place to find materials, he should add some commets talking about the activities or maybe explaining what the links are about....

Now, let's talk about Blog de TIC en Lenguas Extranjeras. This site presents resources for learning and practicing different languages ( English, French...). Here we can find webs in which students play and learn. Most of them are for primary, nonetheless, in the left of the blog, we can find labels to make easier our search. We can find communicative resources such as "skype educational".
Its presentation is clear, its content is so complete and the resources offered are so useful. But, you need to talk Spanish if you want to understand the explanatios they give.

Finally, let's have a look at The FCE blog, the most useful one for me. Claudia Ceraso proposes really good activities to make the students collaborate. For example the weebok. A very interesting site in which the studets can create stories toghether.
She explains every resource she adds in a clear way and give you advices for you to know how to use it properly. You can also find old posts easily.
Most of the activities are for pre- intermediate and intermediate learners, so you have to be sure about the level your students have.

That's all for now.  I hope you find them helpful too!

Educational use of blogs

This is my first time using a blog, and I'm learning how to do it. I'm a little bit worried since I'm not so good at ITC. So let's see how I deal with it. I hope it will be useful for learning English in a new way!

If you are interested in Zodiac, here you have!! Let's learn together!