FeedJournal Basicfeedjournal.com9/3/2007 - 2/23/2008
Nice Surprise! Old friends, Newfriends!
By SusanT
Submitted at 10/28/2007 11:16:30 PM
Well, it's been quite a while since Icreated this blog, but finally foundthe time to visit in order report onwhat's been going on in our EFL-Tech classroom (One 45 min lessonper week).A very pleasant surprise awaited mehere, when I discovered a commentfrom Christine Southard, whom I"met" first on Classroom20. I've beenso sidetracked for the last couple of months, translating the Ning platformto Hebrew, setting up a network formy EFL students and kicking off "Edureshet" a social network forIsraeli educators (reached 50members yesterday - yay!!) that Ihaven't been taking part in theEnglish conversations going on -there just doesn't seem to be enoughtime to fit everything in.Hopefully now that Edureshet seemsto be about to take off I will be ableto revisit the friends I made duringthe summer.As I mentioned briefly above, we,Susanb the EFL teacher and I, haveset up a Ning Network for our EFL6th grade students.Registering to the site, working insidethe Ning space and creating theirprofiles and profile pics, takes timefor our students, but it's all good!They are using English in anauthentic way, and they are enjoyingit so much that they visit the site fromhome too!We have set up the site so that theprofile questions- repeat vocabularyand grammar used in the first fewweeks back at school. The profilepics have been used to revise Parts of the Body, ie students create avatarshere. Next up they will add an "AboutMe" text to their pages, and createvoki characters and after maybe we'llstart blogging.The original intention was to followthe pace of the regular EFL lessons,but so far that has proved impossible- however I think our pace will pick up once the students start to feelcomfortable with the site.For now it is wonderful to see thebusy list of recent activity, to read theshort comments they leave on eachother's pages, to discover throughtheir profile info that Eshel's hobby isbuilding computer games, or Boazplays guitar etc.. That Nir "am not sogood English" (although he really is),to recieve a message from Advathrough the in site mailing system ......and of course to recieve "friend'srequests" :-) (although I haven'tannounced it anywhere - anyonesending me a friend request gets a gif of their name in glitter - I'm waitingto see how long it takes them torealize that)as the site is a closed site instead of adding adding a link I'm uploading acouple of screenpics.
VoiceThread as a CollaborativeEFL learning space.
By SusanT
Submitted at 11/17/2007 10:58:36 PM
I don't think I have mentionedVoiceThread in this blog as yet,surprising really, as if I were tochoose one web2.0 application forEFL elementary, voicethread wouldbe the one.Although a written descriptiondoesn't do it justice here is a quick summary of the features.Userfriendly application whichallows you to create an online albumof photos, pictures, video anddocuments, invite others to contributeby recording their voices, doodles,text, video(web cam) or evenuploading mp3 they have preparedahead of time.Threads can be public or private,comments allowed or not, moderatedor not. Did I mention Userfriendly?VoiceThread is free for teachers, afterrequesting a teacher's account youcan create unlimited VoiceThreads.Although it is neccessary to registerwith a confirmable email address, oneaccount can be used for a wholeclassroom, teacher simply needs toadd extra identities to his account iean identity for each student.So why the intro? Until last week Ihad only tried voicethread with asmall group of students, however lastweek my two 5th grade classes (about70 students) started working on thisthread.I was happy to see that the interfacewas easy for them to learn, but muchhappier when I finally got home atthe end of the day and could listen totheir work.They did a really good job!I'm now looking for classes to join uson the thread, it is moderated socomments won't show up until Iapprove them - (yes, a couple of mystudents recorded things that I'mhappy I got a chance to erase beforethey were seen/heard by others - alsoa couple of the student recordingswere drowned out by a very loudteacher - who has only just realizedexactly how loud she is!)I have started a collection of voicethreads for efl elementary it canbe seen athttp://iteachr.buzka.com/efl_voicethreads if you'd like to add yours to thelist just add a comment to this post.
Twitter -@teachablemoments
By SusanT
Submitted at 1/20/2008 9:34:53 AM
from Langwitches blog…Teachable Moment Twitter AccountPosted: January 19th, 2008, byLangwitches Following an idea thatsprung out at me while I was writingmy previous post, I have decided tocreate a Teachable Moment Shoutoutaccount on Twitter.The idea is as follows:We are all looking to inspire andcreate teachable moments for ourstudents. Many times these areimpromptus, non-planned discussionsand activities. Sometimes they pass asfast as they came, but will leave along lasting impression on you andyour students.Our Twitter is relatively new for allof us and we are experimenting andexperiencing what it dies for our ownand for our students’ learning.Several ones of us have had a greatexperience with a twitter shoutout,followed by a Skype conversation,blog post and comments as well asdirect “conversation” with 140characters or less.Tom Barrett’s GeoTweets: Invitingyour network into the classroomChris Craft & Silvia Tolisano ArabicMystery WritingPlease subscribe to TeachableMoment on Twitter if you are willingto commit yourself to be available,when your schedule permits, to helpanother teacher with a shoutout.Remember, that you might besomeone’s partner from the other sideof the world, which means it mightnot fall between your school hours,where you are with classes,paperwork or blocked access totwitter/skype. So don’t be shy andadd yourself as a follower.You can create an RSS to be alerted if anyone is writing a shoutout to“teachablemoment” by going toTweetscan, searching for“teachablemoment” and thensubscribing to the RSS feed.
MixBook -Collaborative FlipBooks
By SusanT
Submitted at 1/13/2008 3:56:52 PM
Very slick flash application forcreating collaborative flip books.Unfortunately not particularlyuserfriendly or intuitive. However Ilove the concept and the finalproduct! See the flippable versionhere.
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