Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Week 4

Week 4, Task 2
For TASK 2 we will be using http://recordr.tv/, a site which allows us to record videos with our webcams or with our microphones only.

  1. Watch the video below for the two questions we'd like you to answer. 
  2. Go to http://recordr.tv/ and click RECORD (top right) to make a video of yourself  answering the 2 questions.
  3. Grab the embed code, go to our EDMODO GROUP, click on the message box, Type "Week 4:Task 2", click LINK below the message box, paste the embed code, click ATTACH, and send the message with your video response to the group.




Week 4 Task 2 recorded by guest

 TASK 3: A video questionnaire


For TASK 3, the tool chosen is http://intervue.me/. The site allows you to create questionnaires and then have students leave video replies.
The site" intervue" is really wonderful, it gives a nice opportunity to  make up a question and to organize a discussion of it.
I am really sorry that I failed to make up a video reply to the question about the Christmas celebration in Russia. I would like to make up the task in the form of the" educreation"





TASK 4 : Draw your family
For this task  I choose  " educreation"



Task 5
  
Speaking is a hard work for students at any stage of learning. It is necessary to use  digital tools for developing speaking skills for all the ages of the students. I think younger learners should use it only for some time and in a kind of a game, whereas elder students can spend more than half of the lesson for speaking tasks.
The necessary equipment: a computer laboratory with the Internet access, microphnes, earphones, computers.


 1.
 Sometimes it’s really hard for younger learners to train Grammar Rules.
It’s better to give them an opportunity to play and to learn at the same time.
  Studying Present Continuous tense is not so easy for Russian learners (as we do not have any analogy in our language).One of the ways is to organize some work for imagining and describing the current actions.
 I would like to invite my younger learners for a kind of a game.


2.
Studying the weather topic (11-12 years old students) I’d plan to use voxopop. Some time should be devoted to introducing the site and registration of the students.
During the lesson students are given new vocabulary, connected with the weather topic and some useful phrases should be trained.
The home task is to describe the weather. Some ideas of the students maybe similar, but it’s ok, as it helps to train the words and phrases and to check up the home task of the other learners.
http://www.voxopop.com/topic/bd557444-551e-48be-84ce-9e5d066ff96d
3.
For Intermediate students it will be interesting to check up the home task at the lesson by giving a short summary of the text at the specially created Voxopop group discussion.
 (The students should be given a step-by-step instruction, how to use voxopop).
 And the main condition is not to repeat the already mentioned information.
For example, students read and translated the text about the biography of Hans Christian Andersen.
At the classroom they should participate the group discussion, similar to this one.
http://www.voxopop.com/group/af773577-a898-44d8-9f7c-dae7081d7a04
 At the end of the lesson all the ideas should be listened to and discussed by the students.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Week 3 Task 3

Task 3. A lesson plan.

TOPIC OF THE LESSON
 The sights of  New York city

DIGITAL RESOURCES
  1.   http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/2009/12/night-at-museum-battle-of-smithsonian.html
  2. http://woices.com/explore/map#coords=%2840.7541492563,%20-73.9817619324%29&z=14
  3. http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/ 
A computer laboratory: computers, earphones.

CLASS LEVEL
Intermediate 

 TIME FRAME
 1.5 hours

LESSON GOALS
 To develop listening and speaking skills.
 To develop skills in searching the exact information and presenting it as a table.
STEPS
The teacher starts the lesson with a talk about  major sights of any city. Students create a  wordweb about sights of any city.
                                 


















A teacher  says a few words about New York city and its  major sights and organize  the work with the video and the worksheet from the site

 Students create a  table:

                                                            Sights of New York (Manhattan)

                                      Central Park                                                  Times Square
                          -  park at the center of Manhattan           -"The Crossroads of the World"
                          -                                                             -
 The teacher offers the materials of the site "woices" to enhance the knowledge about these sights( The Central Park and Times Square) and to fill in the table.
http://woices.com/explore/map#coords=%2840.7541492563,%20-73.9817619324%29&z=14

These sites might be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_square   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park
The teacher offers the site http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/ and  invited the children to find the stories told by people living in Manhattan.
At the end of the lesson students tell  short stories about these sites.

HOME-TASK
To describe any other sights of New York city, filling in a similar table.









Task 4
I would like to list the resources I will definetely use in teaching.

http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/

   This site  is useful  for learning  some Grammar material.

http://woices.com/

 The site is wonderful for  feeling the atmosphere of the places.

http://www.smories.com/

 Little funny stories and poems performed by  children can be interesting for  young learners.

http://www.listen-and-write.com/audio/level
The leaners of any level will be interested by the site.

http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/
 The site  can be interesting for young researchers.

http://wordia.com/Young learners will be excited  to try such activities.

http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/3-unique-ways-to-record-edit-and-publish-your-audio_b980It's a great site, helping not only to listen but also to record one's audio.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Week 3

Task 1 - Listening Treasure Hunt


a. Time is short. You're preparing for a class in which you want to enhance your students' listening skills. You've got exactly 30 minutes to find a hidden listening treasure. Click on any image below and start your exploration for the great listening hidden treasure. Take notes on what sites/resources you found interesting, their advantages and drawbacks.

b. Ready? Click on this alarm clock to set it up for 30 minutes and leave it there as you browse through the online possibilities.

c. Go!

     
     
     

 

Task 1,2

 I  have been  fascinated by the site http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/
It contains the type of exercises I have been looking for a long time.  The main idea of this site is to show   short videos and to train some grammar material on the basis of the stories, shown in them. there are worksheets on most  grammar topics studied at school.
 I think,  I will use it with a great pleasure.

This site is really nice to work with as little children recite the poems  in  a cute  way! The resource is easy to use for young learners.

This site  is good for advanced learners and it is interesting for teenagers as   famous peopls are interviewed.

 This site  contains quite a large number of the films with the scripts, it gives an opportunity to listen to the movie, or to watch the movie.The collection of the resources is really impressive.

http://www.listen-and-write.com/audio/level
 It's an amazing site!It allows to  choose  texts on many topics, to listen to them and to write a dictation. It is possible to choose different kinds of tasks( just typing, typing the first letter of the word or  filling in the blanks).



http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/
The site gives examples of different accents of English.

http://www.ted.com/  It's  a nice, easy to work with.It gives an opportunity to listen to different ideas of famous people on  many topics.


http://wordia.com/
 The site is created for the children and  it allows to find the resources connected with such subjects as Geography, Science, Humanity and some others. It allows to organize a game or to listen to the video. A fantastic site!

http://woices.com/

 It's a site  of  free geolocalized audioguides. It presents different places and their noise and talks there.



Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Week 2

 The tasks are really wonderful and trying different tools for  writing is a fascinating journey!

http://evo-digiclass.wikispaces.com/Week+2

Task 1.
My choice is 1D 2A 3A ( It was a little bit hard to stay within only 50 words :)
In one city street there lived a dog. All the day it walked along the street and watched around. Nobody knew whose dog it was. Once a boy looked out of the window and noticed how the dog tapped the pavement and a door appeared. The dog came into the door and…

 Task 2.

Describe your understanding of what the tool does and how you would use it. What age group would you recommend the tool for? What is unique about the tool? Do you see possible problems or limitations?


PicLit from PicLits.com
See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

This tool seems to be  useful for developing writing skills.  A student should choose  any picture. Every picture has a set of words, divided  into the coloumns of nouns, adjectives, verbs and other parts of speech.
The task is to drag the words and arrange them into sentences,describing the picture or giving any slogan.  It is possible to use a  " freestyle" function and to type the words by themselves.  After saving the picture, a short slogan  (or a little story)  is made.
 This activity seems  interesting, as it allows to a student to train  his/ her writing skills and allows to refresh Grammar rules and to find a short but capacious description.


The site   http://www.zooburst.com/index.php      allows  students to  show thei stiry in pictures. it is possible to take  pictures from a set or to upload one's own pictures. It's easy to operate and fascinating to use. I think, it would be a great tool for developing writing skills for young  students.
 Here's  an example of using the site.









Task 3.
 The sites offered for collective work  in the field of the creative writing  are really interesting.

http://willyou.typewith.me/    is really  easy to work with, and  the lines of different co-typers are   clearly seen.

The site allows to  work creatively together and to make up a story.( My colleagues helped  me  with the story-writing)
http://willyou.typewith.me/p/Cranberry

 The site  http://entri.co/ is also easy  to work with.
 These two sites seem to be  optiml for using in a classroom.


 Task 4.
  The sites, recomended for  creating presentations are really useful  because  they allow to  make up the necessary information in  order. They offer different types of presenting material, so, it's a set of the instruments  for creative work.


 I also tried  some sites for creative writing.  These ones seem the most useful for working.
http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/8fec792328204564















The Newspaper Clipping
http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp















Dvolver Moviemaker
http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-670885


Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Digital tools in the classroom

Hello, dear colleagues. My name is Svetlana. This is a place for working at the workshop.