Editing the letters individually, with greater contrast between them, would have made the word ("create") more legibleHere's one I'm not so sure about:
graffiticreator.net...
It's
fun, though I'd have liked an un-do button, but maybe that's just me: I've never actually had a go with an aerosol can and reckon true graffiti artists don't,
ever, "un-do"... ,-)! But would I actually want to use this with students?
Criteria for using technologyWhen I'm lesson planning and look at a website or an activity of some sort involving the use of any technology, I ask myself the same questions I suggest in the technology session on our
CELTA course:
- Is it a suitable level of difficulty, language and maturity for my learners...?
- Will my learners enjoy doing it...? Will it engage them...?
- How can / must I adapt it...?
- What are the aims...?
- What are the stages...?
- What language is being used, practised and learnt...?
- What are we going to do with what we've found / created...?
- What is the return-on-investment (time spent setting up, in class...)?
With graffiticreator.net, my doubt is really over
the language that is going to be produced and used: is it
merely going to engage my learners at the visual level and absorb them in understanding how the site works, or am I going to be able to create a task that will really produce a lot of
meaningful (linguistic) interaction?
Decision time...On balance, that looks to me like one that will go into my "For the kids" file in my favourites -- for my own kids, that is,
they'll like it, but I don't think I'll be using it in the classroom with learners.
Now, on the other hand, if we had a
class blog, and I wanted to decorate it, and we had -- say -- a new "graffiti word a week", and the kids wanted to do it in their own time, at home, or when I'd got someone finished all their other work,
then I might consider it -- but my aim would not then be a linguistic one.
Labels: Blogging, CELTA sessions, Images, Teaching Young Learners, Using technology