Podcasting Guide

One that came to me from my RSS feed for the excellent Search English site... Eldis.org has an 18-page

"non-technical guide for those in the learning and training community who are new or relatively new to podcasting and videocasting (vodcasting) and want to explore its potential as part of learning solutions" [summary | pdf ]

I liked its "8 steps to effective podcasting".

>> An even simpler introduction to podcasting
>> More podcasting links

Getting the most out of your OHP

Collecting dust in the corridor: ye olde OHP...

I guess chances are your school either long-since abandoned its overhead projectors (aka OHPs) in favour of interactive whiteboards, or else, er... hasn't actually got to the OHP stage of technological evolution yet.

The excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk site has a new article on using OHPs (which it describes as "the most underused and sometimes misused" of classroom technology resources).

Another place where you'll find good ideas on using an OHP (and lots of other resources, too) is Chandler and Stone's The Resourceful English Teacher, one of the titles in a great "Professional Perspective" series from Delta Publishing.

MySpace or Our Space?

The Electric Shoes: Great band, great example of what you can do with MySpace

In the US in particular, My Space is hugely popular, though there have been doubts raised in US High Schools about security problems (do you want it to be that easy for all those crazy people out there in cyberspace to contact your young learners?).

Here's a great example (not ELT-related) of what you can do with MySpace.

MySpace is very easy to use, and I can see why your teenagers might love it...

Our space, not my space
Personally, however, I've got two things against it, one the security issue (check how many of the MySpace FAQs refer to security: there must be a problem with it!).

The other is that I hate the name "my space".

One of the technologies I do like a lot for language learning is blogging, particularly if what you've got is a collaborative, team blog, to which all your learners contribute.

Then you're talking our space, not my space...

How much does the Internet weigh?

Two useless facts about technology I thought you might like to know:

All the wisdom, information and pornographic images (etc) on the Internet weighs 0.2 millionths of an ounce.

Forest guards in India are using cell phone ring tones of cows mooing, goats bleating, and roosters crowing to lure hungry leopards away from human inhabitation.

Source | Harper's Weekly

Official: Google IS evil!

A post on Jack Schofield's excellent Guardian technology blog drew my attention to this Observer report on something that's been obvious for a long time: Google is Evil.

Not just evil, note, but the most evil, according to the original Privacy International analysis The Observer is quoting, which ranked Google last on privacy among some of the leading Internet companies.

You've been warned!

Something else I didn't have to search for

Here's an idea for a lesson -- an article on Forbes.com on Fifteen Things We Wish Someone Would Invent.

A lesson plan to use with this came to me in my mailbox, in one of DevelopingTeachers.com's weekly Teaching Tips [see current tip; full index of past tips; subscribe].

You could also just get your learners to brainstorm ideas for such things, and perhaps write (blog?) about them...

>> More stuff in your mailbox

Bizarre stories from Ananova

In our session June 11, I mentioned an article I'd spotted out of the corner of my eye on one of my default start pages, Ananova.com, or more specifically Ananova's "Quirkies" bizarre news stories section.

The headline read:

Green blood shocker
Surgeons operating on a man were shocked to find he had green blood

Other recent stories have included:

Robber caught - by mum
A Czech armed robber who targeted McDonald's restaurants was grabbed by the ear and marched to the police station by his mum

Beatles blast for beer burglar
A judge sentenced a Beatles-loving thief by quoting 42 of the band's song titles in his verdict

What could you do with them?
With a story like the first you could obviously ask students to predict what they thought the explanation might be. They could then read the text to find out if they were right. I remember playing a game called Balderdash, in which you got a word, a correct definition of the word, and had to invent three more, with your opponents then having to guess which was the correct one; you could do something similar with stories like this one.

With the second, and others like it, there's always the question of whether or not such stories are true, or merely urban legends -- a discussion topic I've always found works well.

And the third might make an interesting piece of writing: how many song titles can your learners cram in, but still make a coherent story. They could obviously use someone other than the Beatles.

Not searching, having things come to you
In our session, I mentioned Ananova.com being one of my start pages as an example of how you can have things come to you, and not have to go searching the Internet for them.

An alternative to Ananova would be Yahoo's Oddly Enough news section, with similar stories.

Changing your default start page
Check this previous post if you aren't sure how to change the default start page of your browser.

Our amazing houses project

Carla's spaceship house (not shown, the accompanying description)

The kids (8-10 year olds) with one of my colleagues here at IH Barcelona, Oliver Harris, have produced some absolutely fabulous houses.

The idea came from the Macmillan Heinemann coursebook Little Detectives Oliver is using, where there is an example. The kids then came up with a Sun Flower House, an Umbrella House, a Dustbin House, a Cloud House, and Shell House, and many others.

"Last year they came up with even more amazing things," Oliver says. "My favourite was a Rolling House, which was inside a football! Kids have just got so much imagination -- and the detail is just so incredible."

A blog project?
We're currently displaying the project on a noticeboard in the corridor. Had Oliver ever thought of incorporating technology into the project somehow, say, publishing the work on a class blog?

"I'm a bit of a technophobe," Oliver confesses, "but yes, I'm sure they'd love it."

The work they've done really is something to be proud of. There are two good reasons why you might want to use technology there: (a) because they'd love it, as Oliver says, and (b) a blog would be something to be even more proud of: "We made that!"

Can you trust Wikipedia?

Wikipedia entry on Constructivism, 7 June 2007

I was looking for something about constructivism in order to provide further reading for an online course and about #3 on Google was the Wikipedia entry.

It currently carries the proviso "An editor has expressed concern that this article or section is unbalanced" and there is a second doubt about its neutrality (see screenshot, above).

Can you trust Wikipedia?
Well, "trust" is maybe not the word, but I certainly use Wikipedia myself, and recommend it to people. I'd read Wikipedia entries (and anything else I found online) with a touch of skepticism, and compare and contrast the information it provides with another source (possibly one of the sites Wikipedia itself links to for further reading).

Can you trust Wikipedia? Not entirely... Can you trust sites #1 and #2 on Google? Not entirely either!