Week 6

This week I learned about very cool digital tools for teaching English.  

1. Digital storytelling.  There is an application for smartphones called 'storywheel' (can be found easily using storywheel as your keyword).  This is a very cute way for kids to tell stories.  It improves student's skill of speaking, while engaging them and interesting them.  It is basically a little roulette wheel on the screen with various images.  When the image comes up, the student presses the screen and then records himself telling a part of the story inspired by the image.  

2.Voice Chat.  Whatsapp and other voice chat applications like skype, msn messenger etc.. can be used as a tool for communication and a channel for students to communicate with each other.  For example, Whatsapp has a very easy to use voice chat feature whereby students could communicate with a student not in the room, even a student in another country.  This can be a fun way for studetns to practice speaking.

3. Spelling. ww. Learner.org/interactive/spelling/  is a site where students have an automatically produced story appear and the screen.  The story is also read be an automated voice.  So students hear the story and see the story.  A number of the words in the story do not appear on the screen.  There there are boxes for students to fill in the space with the word. The program tests their spelling.  They get immediate feedback.

4. Wisemapping.com is a program that enables users to create mind maps.  It has a nice features for creating a custom mind map.  This can help students with remembering vocabulary or grammar.

5.  Storybird.com is a very nice website with a capactiy to create beautiful stories easily.  The website has a lot of artwork available to users.  The user simply chooses the art he wishes to use in his story and then enters the text of the story.  A beautiful tool for students.  

Week 4

A picture is worth a thoudand words.  That was when words had a high value.  Now a picture is worth a hundred thousand words.  Why is the spending time with your computer so enticing? Because there are lots and lots of pictures on the computer, or, in the computer, as the young children say.  In our school we have a mobile projector of high quality, so I hoping already next week to start using it.  Sometimes even just showing a picture for three minutes at the beginning of class will be very helpful, but certainly some lessons are based on powerpoint pictures.
I like the University of Tennessee website a lot because it is very well organized, practical and extensive.  Sribd.com has some fun things for kids.  Certainly here in the north of Israel on the top of a mountain, connecting our students to the uses of english for educational purposes and the internet is critical.  This is also something which I want to address with them from the standpoint of an educator.  I know that a person can spend hours online and forget to read a book, speak to a friend or wash the dirty dishes in the sink.  Internet is one of the focal reasons they need English, and we will also devote time to discussing the internet.
I am looking forward to using pictures in the classroom to really bring students in to using language. Oh, and don't worry, words still have a high value, the highest value.

Relevant more now

Yes, I am following Scott McLeod's blog, it is called 'dangerously irrelevant' and there is a link to it on a previous entry.  I find McLeod's approach extremely relevant even though it must be considered by some as very unconventional.  I think if our goal is a healthy and vibrant learning environment and developing healthy and engaged students is a real goal of ours, as educators, then we must really think about what are goal is in the classroom.  McLeod is pretty clear than we must prefer to nurture learners over memorizers.  He brings in his Nov. 5th entry a link to an article at wired.com called "In this classroom knowledge is overrrated."  The subject is a classroom in Harlem, New York where learning in groups and student-driven learning is chosen and implemented in favor of frontal teaching lessons.  I think we need to continue to follow McLeod.

So I found three blogs which I plan to follow.

Teachercast 

A very cool blog where teachers can help teachers.  It is a place where anyone can post an article.  Very rich in material.  Has lots of high tech info as well.

Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

Has lots of useful information for techie teachers and even for teachers like myself who are relatively and positively anceint when it comes to tech.  I am interested to learn to use items than can really be helpful.  Nice blog

Dangerously Irrelevant

Blog by Scott McLeod.  Very nicely designed and with lots of info.  Eye on the social implications of technology

Baruch hashem (!)   As soon as I finished posting my first post I felt better, the weight lifted.
Hoping and waiting for more good news, soon.
Incidentally, has anyone found or made a kosher movies list ?

I am very excited and very nervous about this course.  For some reason, at the moment, moving around the internet feels weighty and not weightless.  I think this can be a very  useful course for me.  Hoping to make the most of it !