Non-linear PowerPoint

PowerPoint: you can make it interactive!

As language teachers, you probably aren't big users of Microsoft PowerPoint. It might well be a tool you use for giving a talk or workshop at a conference or if, like me, you teach technology. But, as language teachers, using it is probably rapidly going to produce Death by PowerPoint and, in any case, you're not supposed to be lecturing your learners, are you?

As a workshop presenter, you certainly want to avoid inducing Death by PowerPoint, which is caused by -- among other things -- using too much text and too many bullet points per slide and then simply reading monotonously through it all, which your audience could have done at home on their own.

If you can make it an interactive presentation in some way, in which you respond to and dialogue with your audience, PowerPoint can nevertheless be a powerful tool. If, on the other hand, your audience has gone terribly quiet, best call the doctor quick -- for yourself.

Creating a non-linear presentation is one way to ensure that you respond not lecture. The following links came from the February 2009 issue of the Office Insider for Microsoft Office newsletter:

• Tailoring your message to the audience is everything!
• Relational Presentation: the visually interactive side of PowerPoint
  

If you're not that expert with PowerPoint, and want an easy way to allow yourself a non-linear PowerPoint presentation, you do have a "Go to" function which allows you to jump to whichever slide you want -- and not necessarily the next one:

Right-clicking in "Slide Show view" allows you to jump to whichever slide you want...

Make the learners make the PowerPoints
With learners, PowerPoint can be fun too -- for making presentations (eg. of the results of webquests), as well as for creative writing exercises.

With the latter, young learners love making multimedia stories with PowerPoint, including sound and images as well as text.

See also: Using PowerPoint Interactively in the Classroom

Obama's sentence structure

I'm not sure that this Obama sentence is actually something you'd want to use in class, except perhaps at a very high level:

"My view is also that nobody's above the law, and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen, but that, generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards."

But, at least to teachers, the language analysis here, and linked to from here, is interesting!

The following comment might just get a class discussion going:

This may be the essential Obama gift: making complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine.

As a starting point, before looking at the sentence, what is "the essential Obama gift"...?

And I suspect that word "masculine" might get some of my learners going!

How to embed things on a blog

In our Celta Course session, Tuesday, we looked at the above video, from VideoJug.

I suggested that, before watching it, learners could brainstorm a list of things you should do if you want to be able to get your own way with another person. We then used those learner-generated lists as our "listening comprehension" questions, and ticked off those mentioned as we watched.

Why would you want to embed a video
You might want to "embed" such a video on your own class blog -- "put" it there, if you prefer -- as then you have greater control over what else your learners will see. Currently displaying on the same VideoJug page are videos relating to "how to get out of a car without showing your knickers" and "how to have sex in public without being caught", for example.

You probably don't want your young learners to see or watch those...!

If you want you learners to be able to post things on a class blog (and I would suggest that you do!), then teaching them how to embed things (nice things ,-)! is a way of giving them control over what they watch and talk about in class.

How do you embed a video

Copy that line of code!

To embed a video, you need first to copy the "embed" code, highlighted above. Ensure you copy all of it: if you right-click on it, you can then "select all" to make sure that you do.

Paste the code into right place!

All you then have to do is paste the code on your blog. Make sure that you paste it in the right place: if you are using Blogger.com, you will have to use the "Edit Html" tab, shown above.

Again, you want to make sure it starts with the code object... and ends .../object>. If it does, you should then be able to preview it, and find that it will play correctly.

Needless to say you don't need to understand what any of that code means... !

>> Another video: Dance moves: an emergency guide for men

Sitcoms: consuming or creating?

Videoing on a mobile phone: making it less intimidating than a video camera

More from the very excellent TeachingEnglish.org.uk, this time on exploiting sitcoms...

A lesson...
Besides the likelihood that your learners are going to just love them, there is an awful lot of language you can get out of sitcoms, as the article on building a lesson around a sitcom suggests. When it comes to choosing a sitcom, my own suggestion would be that you don't choose it, but that your learners do. What they already watch (perhaps in their own language) and can tell you about is likely to be more popular than something you pick (unless it's Fawlty Towers, which is always a success!)

An activity...
There is also a Sitcom information activity, which includes a photocopiable worksheet with a gap fill exercise.

I've got my doubts about this one -- not so much about the activity itself as about whether or not that is the way we should be using technology. Photocopying exercises is one use we could make of technology -- the photocopier being part of technology -- but it has the students merely consuming, not creating.

The activity suggests the learners then go to YouTube and watch a clip of one of the sitcoms mentioned in the text; but that's merely consuming too.

If you get your learners to watch and create listening comprehension questions for each other, instead of merely watching, then you've got greater engagement, not merely entertainment.

Actually creating a sitcom...
A third idea on the same site involves actually creating a sitcom; now that's more like it!

I'd suggest that, in this last case, you really want to get your learners to video it -- that's creating, not merely consuming.

To get round the problem of people not wanting to be filmed, you might try filming on mobile phones first, as they appear less intrusive; and always remember that no one should be forced to act but that, if they don't want to, there are other roles such as directing and the actual filming that can engage all the members of a group... You could also record audio only, not video.

My experience of such things is people's inhibitions tend to drop, when they see what fun it can be.

A card reader for getting photos off a camera

Don't have the right cable? You want a card reader...

Someone asked during my workshop the other day how problematic obtaining photographs off digital cameras was likely to be if, as I had suggested, some of your learners bring their own cameras but forget to bring the appropriate cable with them.

You download photos from a digital camera by connecting the camera to a USB port (the same slot you put a USB memory drive into, that is). Cables for most digital cameras are fairly standard but a card reader (approx. cost 12-20 euros) is sometimes useful -- and very easy to use.

You simply remove the memory card ("A" in the photo, above) from its slot on the camera ("B") and place it in the right slot in the card reader ("C"). In most cases you are probably using an "SD card", which -- not surprisingly -- goes into the "SD" slot.

All you then have to do is plug the cable ("D") into the USB port on your computer and then either view the photos directly from the card or else download the pictures on to the computer.

That is possibly the easiest way to share photos with a class and the same can be done directly from the camera, if you do have the appropriate cable.

If you have a projector and can turn the photos into a literally wall-sized image (simply by clicking on them), your learners can then orally "present" photos that they have taken, in class, for homework, of their families, from their holidays...

You could do the same with your photos, but photos the learners have taken themselves are surely much more meaningful to them...

Easy, fun, meaningful tasks with technology

Easy, fun, meaningful...

Welcome to those of you who came to my talk on Easy, fun, meaningful activities with technology at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference today...

The tasks I proposed assumed that at least one, preferably more digital cameras (or mobile phones, or webcams...) were available to your learners, either at school and/or at home. Below, how I defined "easy", "fun" and "meaningful" and, although the tasks suggested involved cameras, I think the same criteria apply to any other technology you might be considering using in the language classroom.

Easy...
The "ease" is particularly the easy and speed of set up -- and the time involved, before and after class. You don't want to be editing images, for example, afterwards -- though, as I suggested in my talk, your learners could be doing that (and I suggested using Picnik).

Having no programs to instal can be important in a school: can you, as a teacher, actually instal programs on your school's network? Probably not.

As much as anything, you want to limit the time you the teacher have to spend on the technology; what you want is a huge return-on-investment, i.e. for the amount of pre- and post-class time you invest, your language learners in- or post-class get a huge return in terms of the language they practise and learn.

Fun...
In my classroom experience, what is creative is fun; and because it's creative and fun it's enjoyable; and if what is created is also shared with other learners, it's motivating and thus more fun. If it is motivating, if learners want to do things, and (provided you ensure that they speak in English doing well-designed tasks maximising interaction) it's also and most importantly, successful in terms of language learning. They learn more, in other words.

And then they are more motivated, and learn more, and have more fun... It's a cycle of success -- and of enjoyment.

Meaningful...
In my talk, I contrasted photographs taken by learners with cloze tests [define]... The picture that my learner has taken (not stolen from Google-is-Evil, note) matters; it's an end-product that you can share and care about.

When did the answers to a cloze test ever really matter to a learner (unless it was on an exam)? When did a learner ever really feel truly proud of a completed cloze test...?

I've been having my learners complete cloze tests for nearly thirty years and I've never, ever, seen a learner enjoy one.

But most importantly...
I've highlighted in my slide (above) how I'm suggesting using technology: to create and share end-products. But that's merely how I'm suggesting using it...

What really matters in language classrooms is that lots of language learning takes place.

That's what is important, the learning, not the technology. The technology is merely the tool that affords opportunities for language learning to occur...

Task #1: A single image with text

A single digital image plus text

This was the first of the easy, fun, meaningful tasks I suggested in my talk today at the annual IH Barcelona ELT Conference.

I highlighted the importance of the things in red on my slide, above:

• The learners taking photographs of things of personal value to themselves (a watch, a necklace...) -- something that they care about
  
• The tasks being done with a partner, your partner taking the photo and writing the text about your object, and vice-versa -- so that learners interact meaningfully in English
  
• The photo itself -- the end-product that is being created
• The text -- which will afford more opportunities for meaningful interaction to take place
• The sharing of the texts and images -- creating something to look back at and be proud of
  

Sharing images
For sharing the images and text you could use the classroom noticeboard (which is certainly the simplest); or Flickr (which is also very easy); or a blog (which is also very easy to set up [how]).

The problem with Flickr would be including the text, but you could go for an image and a short oral presentation.

My personal recommendation would be a class blog, with Blogger.com being among the best choices for setting your blog up.

See also:

• techlearning.com's Portraits of Learning (the source of the idea)
• enmibolsillo.blogspot.com (an example)

Task #2: Mystery photos on a throw-away camera

Pictures on a throw-away camera: about as simple as technology gets...

The second task that I proposed in my workshop at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference last week was "Mystery photos on a throw-away camera", a task originally suggested by my colleague Susana Ortiz.

As you can see from my slide (above), the tasks has learners working in pairs to take up to 3 "mystery" pictures per pair on a throw-away camera (for costs, see the first "comment" below), and then passing the camera on to the next pair, with the photos being developed when the film runs out.

You could do the same thing with a digital camera, a mobile phone or a webcam, all of which would have advantages over the throw-away camera, most notably the digital image you will get from them (and can thus edit and upload, etc).

The disposable camera, however, is more of a challenge (you can't just go on taking pictures until they come out right) and the mystery of not knowing until the end what photos other people have taken (no "telling" when the camera is passed on to the next pair), and the shared experience are all reasons for considering turning to what I described in my talk as being "the pond scum" of technology -- the lowest of the low.

But learning should be a challenge and it should be an experience, something which is memorable...

See also
On our Formación ELE blog, for Spanish teachers [content in Spanish], you can see some of the pictures of Barcelona taken by students in Susana's class.

Task #3: A photograph of learning actually occurring

Follow the steps and the task isn't as impossible as it might look...

This was the third of the easy, fun, meaningful tasks I suggested in my talk today.

It is easy -- from the technical point of view. All you your learners have to do is point the camera and shoot, and then share it in some digital way (eg. on a blog, or as a PowerPoint presentation, as I suggested).

It is however more of a challenge. Can you actually photograph the actual instant learning occurs, and actually capture it on film? I've been trying for years and never really ever got close to it.

What your learners should aim for is a photograph in which they can then say "What we were trying to capture was...". The end-product is less important than the meaningful interaction that precedes it -- though it is also true that working towards producing an end-product makes that interaction meaningful.

And, as I suggested, discussing the subject of when learning takes place first, before taking out the camera, will make it slightly less of a challenge, as well as creating the opportunity for the interaction to occur.

Stick figure storyboard

The stick figure storyboard (example above) will also help, and is again creative and fun to do...

The interaction -- the use of language -- is what is most important, together with the appropriate language assistance you (reactively) provide. But I think the challenge is what I like about this task: we should be challenging learners in classrooms...

Valentine's Day lesson plan

Harry met Sally on the Internet...

Here's an idea for a creative, collaborative writing activity for Valentine's Day, which is coming up shortly, which uses a process writing approach...

• Whole class, discuss what good love stories have in common and what they boil down to, preferably a single sentence... The conclusion we reached in the group I first tried this with was that all love stories are variations on "Harry met Sally".
• Individually, have learners expand on that single sentence, not necessarily to finish the story but to make it more romantic.
• In pairs, have the learners pick which of their two stories they like best and, together, expand the one they chose into a first draft of the story
• Whole class, share the stories... This could be done on the computer screens, if you are using computers, or by printing them out, or by posting them on a blog
• In pairs, have the learners give other pairs feedback (orally or in writing...) on their story (what they like/dislike, would add/take away...)
• Edit the story into a second draft, with possibly a second round of feedback...
• Publish the final versions (classroom walls, class blog...)

Process writing and word processing: they were just made for each other, and such activities are lots of fun to do in class, especially when the results are shared and (because the stories are written in pairs) there's no pressure on each individual to prove him/herself a brilliant writer.

Not many students say they enjoy writing, but most say they like doing things in pairs...

More ideas for Valentine's Day:

>> From Larry Ferlazzo
>> Be my Valentine!