Do you want to catch your students’ interest as reporters? Have them shoot their own videos with their news and their experiences and upload them into this nice website, What’s Your News.
Some friendly ants will welcome you. You can register really easily, customize your ant-avatar and watch and upload videos, pictures, audios and texts, and also download freebies.
Your students can even upload videos where they tell how to do things, and post documents telling how to do that activity in class.
xtranormal… xtracatchy!!! Your students will be able to create movies in 10 minutes… their imagination is the limit… and the number of characters and backgrounds of the free version, of course! But it’s really enough to create interesting stories with your pupils.
Text-to-Movie is the 2D online version which lets you embed your creations in blogs or send the url to friends (or teachers 🙂 ). The downloadable version is called State. The free version of State lets you create 3D stories with the same limitations of the free online version Movie-to-Text. Movies created with State can be exported to mp4 or also uploaded into youtube.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/FXPyCgOQkI0" width="282" height="232" wmode="transparent" /]
Hello again!
It’s been a long time, and no excuses can bring forgiveness to my oblivion… too much work at home… three daughters… Probably I could have found the time to publish briefer posts, but my mind was elsewhere. My apologies. I promise I’ll try to stay in tune with you!
So… here I am! Back from outer space!
If you think we must use our classrooms to spread the idea of a different approach towards our environment, have a look at this site
 The Story of Stuff is basically a 20-minute videoclip where Annie Leonard shows how we are deteriorating our planet. Clear animations and a very good narrative for a cross-curricular approach. The only drawback is the absence of transcript. It shows the process of overuse of our natural resources, their transformation into products and their latter change into pure rubbish which increasingly fills our planet. Specially adequate for advanced/Batxillerat students.
Let’s forget this is an ELT blog for a while. This video from Matt Harding shows us the plain truth: The world is full of good people who are always ready to start dancing when they hear the simple beating of a rythm. Dance is in our souls, and when we take out our inner child and start moving, jumping and swinging to the rythm of music, we take the best of ourselves. This is just a tribute from a simple language teacher, to all those teachers of the most important language across boundaries: Dance
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/zlfKdbWwruY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Still, there’s room for ELT, as usual!
Visit Matt’s webpage Where the hell is Matt? This website offers different possibilities for us teachers. It is worth reading the section “About Matt” after you have watched the video with your students. It tells Matt’s story… really interesting, and easy to read. In the section “Journal”, a blog shows different articles concerning Matt’s project… his travels, his meetings…
Use this website to talk about values, about friendship, peace, music, dance, life… I knew we would end up saying we could use it in our lessons!
People from Amanita Design have produced a beautiful online videogame for the BBC educational website: Questionaut
Travel with a friendly voyager in pursuit of his friend’s windswept hat, and answer multiple questions from different fields in a dream-like world, flying with your balloon and winning oxygen by answering correctly. There’s fun and learning, and it’s in English! Worth a visit!
After a while without posts, here’s one with interesting websites for your lessons. They are worth a look during the coming holidays: ESL and Clil have room here… enjoy!
This website has a large list of online activities to foster reading and writing skills. Among the long list, I have chosen two applications:
Character Trading Cards is an application based upon the popular trading cards students use. Here students can customize their own cards making up different characters with their specific features: Mood, weaknesses, strengths, problems, approach to life… Students fill the card with the information required in an easy step-by-step process.
These trading cards can be printed and used in order to create stories or role play situations. Writing, reading and speaking in a bunch!
Fractured Fairy Tales helps students create brand new stories out of classical fairy tales which are fragmented and reused after changing some of its characteristic traits (part of the plot, characters, end of the story…) An easy interface with easy write and click instructions. Really catchy!
An extremely nice website for young students created by the New York Zoos and Aquarium Authority. Choose the animal parts you want to have in your own wild self, and create a new species in the animal world! Navigation is easy and the library has many different options … good fun!
The parts you have chosen will help you make up the name of this strange creature. Learn about its habitat and how it reacts to the world around it… Your students will love it!
Good website with animations and road education! Hector’s Home gives students a very good time with some very spooky short films where Hector, the main character, moves about the city and learns the most important aspects of road education.
You can watch the films and do the activities and games that appear as you move around.
Teachers can enter a special area where very useful lesson plans are provided. They’re worth a look, believe me!
A really catchy website, they learn road education as they practise their English.
Watch the telly and learn languages! Lingorilla is a very interesting initiative where you can watch TV episodes to practise English , be part of language groups where you can talk and also keep your own folders with your favourite resources to learn English… or other languages! There are tests, quizzes and other very helpful resources. You only have to register and there you are!!
The European Schoolnet has launched a survey on the use of videogames in the classroom. They are doing it in coordination with the European Federation of Interactive Software. The idea is to see how teachers see the use of commercial videogames in the classroom: its positive and negative aspects, case studies, government policies, the view of experts…
You can see an outline of this initiative at http://games.eun.org/
They are asking teachers to complete a questionnaire on the use of these tools. It is valid for those who use them and also for those who don’t. It is important to know the reasons why they are regarded as something good or bad in the process of knowledge acquisition.
You can fill the questionnaire in English at:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB227P9S5DYST
Also in Spanish at:
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB2285LHT63PT
Teachers filling the questionnaire may win an XBOX360 .
Why don’t you spend 10 minutes there and let European Schoolnet learn on what we think about the use of these products?