Cartoons, animations and presentations

ToonDoo: OK, so it is homework, but at least it's fun!

Below, some of the links I provided in a creative writing workshop I gave recently for Macmillan (and welcome to any of you who came/are coming in Girona, Lleida or Palma!).

Cartoons and animations

• Dfilm MovieMaker
• Toondoo.com
  
• Voki
• Zimmertwins
  

Note that Dfilm MovieMaker is possibly not suitable for young learners.

Presentations

• Animoto.com
  
• Prezi
• Voicethread
  

Personally, I have a preference for using good old Word, or even PowerPoint, or (best) a blog, for creative writing as I think that with some of the above your learners will end up spending more time on the technology and less time on the writing and the interaction in English (with the latter being what we're really trying to obtain in the language classroom)...

But I accept that, especially with younger learners, being able to animate things is probably more exciting, and hence more motivating and engaging and thus as likely as anything to produce learning.

Twitter: no privacy, choked with spam

Largely because I've come across a number of links suggesting how Twitter could be used in education (see below), I've been having another play with it -- and frankly I'm not impressed.

Unless I've missed something, there seems to be a major privacy issue. Either spammers are forcing me to "follow" them or else Twitter itself has decided that I've got to follow a certain number of people, whether I'm interested in what they're twittering about or not. Within 24 hours, I found myself "following" (that is, receiving updates from) 24 people, only 3 of whom I'd actually chosen to follow, all of them with over 500,000 "followers".

The result? That when I log in, I am first forced to read the equivalent of junk email, and worse, have to choose to stop following each of the spammers individually, before I start to see the updates from people like Lance Armstrong (1.6m followers) that I am interested in.

>> Twitter in education:

• 25 ways to teach with Twitter (TechLearning.com)
• Nik Peachy on Twitter
  
• Twitter for Academia
  
• Twitter education groups ("twibes")
  

>> Previous Twitter posts:

• Twittering in ELT
• Twitter
  

Cool, Web 2.0 tools

One I picked up in my RSS feed from the excellent TeachingEnglish.co.uk site: an amazing collection of Cool, Web 2.0 tools for schools.

From the same source, another interesting link suggesting a Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners.

Facebook makes you stupid?

An unnamed US study reckons 68% of school pupils using Facebook got "significantly lower" exam marks than those who didn't, according to The Week, the study referred to probably being that of Ohio State, according to TIME.

What it doesn't say -- though I haven't personally read the actual report -- is whether or not the exams themselves were actually testing what the learners know, or were relevant to their learning styles or actual real-world needs, and I suspect that quite possibly they weren't.

I might just be tempted to use Facebook rather than e-mail as a means of communication with learners as -- says my daughter (13) -- no-one ever uses e-mail now, at least not young learners.

What would put me off would be the privacy issues. While creating a new Facebook profile recently, I got asked did I want to be friends with these 25 people -- all of whom looked suspiciously young, and none of whom I recognised...

Hold on, I did recognise them: they were all 13, all girls, and all my daughter's friends. If you're going to use technology with young learners, you want a network that is a whole lot more secure than that...

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

Twittering in ELT

What are people in ELT twittering about? Is it useful to me and/or my learners...?

According to TIME magazine, "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app..." (as Twitter is proud to proclaim on its home page).

From long experience, I would suggest that a healthy dose of scepticism is always called for whenever the words "next killer app" are used, be it Twitter or Second Life or interactive whiteboards, or any new bit of technology.

"Are my learners actually going to learn more, if I use this?" -- that would be the first question I think you should ask yourself as an English teacher. What are they (as opposed to me, the teacher) actually going to use the technology for, to do what, that will ensure that they learn more...?

If you can't see answers to those questions, I'd suggest you hold on before you jump on the latest digital bandwaggon.

Twitter is big at this moment, whatever people are using it for. They're also Using Twitter as an Education Tool, in a number of ways, says Search Engine Watch, such as using it to set assignments.

I'm not a Twitter user myself, either personally, or for use with my classes: I just can't see the answers to those questions...

>> 7 things you should know about Twitter
>> More on Twitter

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...?

Twitter

Look Mum, I'm eating soup...!

It's not a technology that I've used personally, but here are some links that will be of interest if all your friends are talking (or twittering...) about it and/or you wonder if you could use it for teaching.

What is it?
Twitter describes itself as "a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?". In 140 characters, or less, that is. Like, you think it's important that your Mum knows you're eating soup (see image, above)...? Or she thinks it's important...

Don't dismiss it
You don't think that's important, huh? Well, Jennifer Laycock -- and hundreds of thousands of others -- "embraced Twitter" and thinks "you should too". And maybe we should take a look at the technology -- any technology -- and ask how we might use it (see below), before dismissing it out of hand.

Laycock's is quite a good guide to getting started with Twitter (see also parts two and three).

How it could be used in the classroom
As a Twitter skeptic, it doesn't surprise me that practical classroom ideas for it are a bit thin on the ground.

Over at weblogg-ed.com, Will Richardson has 1,000 people following his twitterings (that's not meant unkindly); can see that it must have possibilities; but is still getting over "Twitter guilt" (over spending too much time on it) and doesn't seem to have pinned them down yet.

Elsewhere, this article on chronicle.com drew my attention to David Parry's more concrete proposals, Twitter for Academia, on AcademHack.

I still think it would be better just to get your students to talk to each other face-to-face or use technology to create something more permanent... But, as I say, I'm a skeptic who's never actually tried Twitter...

Mr. Picassohead

Portrait drawn on Mr. Picassohead

My RSS feeds brought me another great link from Larry Ferlazzo this morning: Mr. Picassohead, which now allows you to save and send the picture you have created (see example, above).

You could have your students create portraits as a way of learning "face vocabulary", as Larry suggests, at quite a low level.

Personally, I'd have them work in pairs and ensure that they had the vocabulary to make suggestions ("Let's choose that one...", "Why don't we...") as well as the vocab to operate the tools together ("Drag that over there", "You have to click the Rotate button", etc), especially at a higher level.

See also Making animations with Dfilm

50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story

Another link, suggested by Ana Falcon, that came to my mailbox in the ELTECS Latin America news list -- 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story.

I think storytelling -- getting your learners to write stories, to tell multimedia stories -- is one of the most interesting things you can do in a language class. Apart from the obvious opportunities for learning and using language that such a project provides, it's the creating things aspect of it that attracts me -- and it's one of the best possible uses we can make of technology, as it takes much fuller advantage of the potential of technology than, say, seeing and using the Internet as a bank of images for use in class.

You want good group dynamics in your class? Get your learners to create and share something together.

The article (or wiki, to give it its proper term), contains lots of useful ideas and links, including links to audio, images and video available under Creative Commons licences -- ie. that you can use without infringing copyright.

The author, Alan Levine, has the commendable rule that "the media files you use in your story have to be ones that are licensed or shared with permission to re-use". However, my suggestion would always be that your learners create their own images, audio files, etc.

The more they create themselves, the less they steal from other websites, the prouder they will be of their work; the "pride in creation" is wonderful for motivation, for wanting to learn...

>> ELTECS news lists
>> More good stuff in your mailbox
>> Creative Commons
>> More on digital storytelling
>> Er... What's Web 2.0?

Videos for learning to use technology

This one came to my mailbox from one of the ELTECS news lists.

It mentioned a post on Nik Peachey's Learning technology teacher development blog for ELT, which referred to the materials on teachertrainingvideos.com.

Teachertrainingvideos.com has lots of things of interest, particularly for ELT, for anyone looking for something to "help them to incorporate technology into their teaching".

A possible alternative would be TeacherTube.com.

Nik Peachey's blog is similarly of interest, covering a wide range of the technologies available to us.

Dreamweaver and FrontPage

Someone on our technology courses last month wanted to know about more about Dreamweaver and FrontPage, two html editors [definition] for creating webpages.

Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver (price currently 347 GBP from Amazon.co.uk) is much the better of the two, and is a program I've used -- and liked very much -- every working day for about the last five years.

It's not that difficult to start to learn, comes with a full manual, has good online support and tutorials and is a very professional solution for building webpages.

You also want to know about the following, sooner rather than later, as webpage design is not just a question of learning to use Dreamweaver:

• Good design principles (lots of ideas on A List Apart)
  
• Basic html (coding)
• CSS, including positioning (some great tutorials from MaxDesign)
  

Personally, I'd recommend learning a little about html and CSS even before you start with Dreamweaver.

Microsoft FrontPage has now in fact been replaced by Expression Web (price 256 GBP from Amazon.co.uk, 85 GBP for an upgrade from FP). FrontPage had its limitations, Expression Web looks to be on a par with Dreamweaver, though I've not used it extensively.

But do you really want to know about such programs?
You can create webpages with other programs, far less sophisticated ones, like those available at Yahoo and Google, for example.

Or -- if you want something professional looking and dead easy to set up -- your best bet would probably be to set up a blog.

What's Second Life? What's an interactive whiteboard (etc)?

I've been teaching on "technology for teachers" seminars for the last three weeks (and a very late "Hello" to you all if you are attending!).

Many of the questions that the teachers ask begin "What's...?" Blogs, interactive whiteboards, ipods, mp3 players, podcasting, smartboards, Second Life... What are they, and how can you find out what they are?

Places to go to find out
Fortunately, there are places to go where you can find out what a particular piece of technology is. Note, again, how far down my list Google-is-Evil comes.

1. Ask a colleague, some in the family, one of your kids (your own or someone in your class)
   
2. Wikipedia, which is great for the basic information, and will provide links if you want to find out more. Wikipedia gets slammed for being inaccurate, but it provides you with information and has no interest in selling you anything, unlike Google and the sites that appear on it
   
3. YouTube, on which you can find great videos (ok, and some that are dreadful) of the technology in action
   
4. Teachertube, on which you will find the same, with videos designed particularly for teachers and teaching and learning
   
5. Somewhere else on the web, a blog like the one you are reading now, or a directory like TeachingEnglish.org.uk
6. Last and least, Google-is-Evil
   

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...

NiceNet: Your own virtual classroom

NiceNet... Certainly nice and easy to set up.

Several teachers have recommended me NiceNet recently. It allows you to set up a "virtual classroom" within seconds, and then "conference", share documents and links and so on.

I've not used it myself other than setting up my own classroom (see image above) to try it out. As a great fan of Yahoo Groups I think personally I'd stick with them... Or possibly a wiki, but it certainly looks a good alternative to those.

More about NiceNet.