Making collages with Glogster

Glogster: Yes, and those creep crawlies moved about on the page... Yuck!

Like ImageChef [see previous post], Glogster allows you to create images, though the latter is a lot more sophisticated, allowing you to create much more complex collages, making it suitable for older young learners with a higher level of English.

If you got your learners to work together in pairs to create their collage, there is a lot of potential for interaction and language use. You can't quite understand how it works? Don't worry, your kids will get it immediately!

As always in the technology classroom, you want to make sure that language is English!

Alternatively, you could get them to create their collages at home and then present them to the class in an oral presentation.

See also >> Making animations with Dfilm

My basketball jersey is blue

ImageChef is one for young learners at a very low level -- I think.

They'd love it, I'm sure (my 12-year-old daughter and all her classmates do, for one thing) but I say "I think" because I'm not sure how much language learning you would get out of it.

Basically, it allows you to create a simple image like the one on the right from a series of templates, something which you could have your learners do for homework. If they then brought them back to class to show each other (or display on the walls, or post on a class blog...) you would get such language as "My shirt is red", "It's a basketball jersey" out of it.

As always, before I used the technology, I'd ask "How much language learning am I going to get out of it?", "What's the return on investment?"

The "investment" is in terms of time -- your time and your learners' time (in class or at home). The "return" is the amount of language learning and practice you get out of the activity.

The return on investment (ROI) is low? Don't do it. Your ROI is high? Go for it!

See also >> Making collages with Glogster

CELTA session, May 9

Hi, and welcome if you've come to this morning's session...!

I'm going to divide you into three groups, and ask you to look at 3 different projects which involve language learners using technology:

1. A creative writing project
2. Pictures on mobile phones
3. Score your own wonder goal!
   

You've got about 20 minutes to actually do the project (or as much of it as time allows).

Then I'd like you to use the "comments" feature to answer the following questions:

1. Could you have done the project (or something similar) just as well without the technology?
2. What would the advantages/disadvantages of using the technology be?
3. Do you think the technology leads to a lot of language learning with these projects?
4. What else do you like/dislike about the project, and why?
   

Answer the above questions in the comments on the appropriate post (ie. via the links above, not in the comments to this post).

>> See also
For any of you who feel that you don't know much about technology, you might find the Technology 101 section here on this blog useful.

There are some books on using technology in the Bibliography section that you might also find useful.

And here's how to change the default start page of your browser, which was mentioned during the session.

A creative writing project

Our pictures: we could just have stolen them from Google, but went for the non-tech approach!

Below, the rough outline of a creative writing project I'm team-teaching with a colleague next week, with two groups of Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate adults, most of whom use English for work, who have recently been working on register.

Our materials are a series of photographs of people torn out of newspapers and magazines... and that's it.

Stages of the project:

1. Ss (=students) look at the photographs, select 6-8 of them, and decide how the people are related (relatives? work? living in the same block? )
2. Ss decide what "the story" is going to be (someone gets/doesn't get the job, consequences, etc., etc...)
3. Ss make brief "character notes" on the people selected (name, age, background, character...)
   
4. Ss decide what written texts there could be that would "tell" the story (job applications, emails, memos, reports, post-it notes...)
5. Ss agree on and make any alterations necessary for the story to be coherent
6. Ss then write the texts (in pairs, not individually), and post them on a blog
7. Ss write comments on the blog (both on the content, and to provide feedback on the project)
8. Ts (=teachers) provide feedback, correction, etc.

At Stages 1 to 7, the teachers will also be providing help with whatever language is necessary...

That's the outline, we'll provide a link to the actual results of the project... But what do you think so far...?

Would you mind if I take a photo of you?

... and could you take one of us, too?

Here's a small project suggested to me by a colleague, Susana Ortiz, who got her students to take their mobile phones out into the street to take pictures.

They'd been practising making requests and asking for permission, and what they had to do was, in pairs, (1) ask a complete stranger if s/he would mind taking a photo of them, and then (2) ask another complete stranger if s/he would mind if they took a photo -- of the stranger.

Foreign students learning Spanish in Barcelona, they then returned to class to report back how they'd got on (no, none of them got themselves punched, though in most cases they had to explain what it was for, and they did get quite a few "no way's" before they got their pictures!).

What do you think of it as a project...?

Score your own wonder goal!

Gascoigne into space, look at this, Gascoigne: two-nil!

Here's one that I got from the amazing collection of links produced by Larry Ferlazzo -- which might make a great activity when Euro2008 comes round this summer.

Larry's suggestion is to have your learners use Reebook's Sprintfit KFS Replay tool to create a goal and "relive your greatest football moments" (registration required). You've got tutorials and can replay goals like the one Gazza scored against Scotland at Euro96 (picture, above). It's not exactly PlayStation, but it's probably a lot more interesting than the next unit in Headway!

As Larry points out, and as with so many of the things you can do with technology, it's the talking and the reading the tasks will involve as much as the task itself that that are important in the language classroom... We're using the technology to produce that, and the interaction between our learners -- for the sake of that, and not merely for the sake of the technology itself.

You could just watch the YouTube video of the Gazza goal... But isn't it so much better to get the learners to create things themselves...?

Cuisenaire rods

Red, white, white, yellow: She | should | n't | 've | stayed | out so late...

Here are some links I came across while putting together the pages on our online phonology course (or "Sounds, stress and intonation: Teaching English pronunciation" to give it its full name).

The course has a section on features of connected speech, and suggests using Cuisenaire rods as one way in which you can practise and clarify such things as stress, weak forms, intrusion and catenation...

In our online course materials, we like to include links to other useful resources, and here are some on using Cuisenaire rods:

>> What are Cuisenaire rods? (Wikipedia)
>> Cuisenaire rods in the language classroom (te.org.uk)
>> Cuisenaire rods in the language classroom (John Mullen)
>> Cuisenaire rods for storytelling
>> More on Cuisenaire rods

Flashcard Maker

Teacher, Doctor, Painter, Photographer...

If you like to make flashcards for your learners, you might like the flashcard maker available at cambridgeenglishonline.com (a sample produced with it shown above). It's easy to use, free, comes with quite a large selection of images and, among other features allows you to write not only text but also phonemic script.

The flashcard maker was one of the teaching links I came across on teachingenglish.org.uk.