http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/ Web 2.0 for learning and teaching - the continuing online adventures of a not-so-techie teacher en Copyright 2013 Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:08:14 +0900 http://www.eltnews.com/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss the Virtual Round Table, a web conference. If you missed it, all of the webinar recordings are now available online. Now I'm preparing for the 2nd iTDi Global Webinar, which happens this coming Saturday, April 28th. Since I'm also helping to organize this webinar, I thought it might be interesting to take you along for a peek behind the scenes, so you can see how a webinar is similar to, and different from face-to-face presentations. Much of the preparation is very similar. You need to find speakers people will want to listen to and learn from. However, one big difference is that for a webinar you don't have to worry about proximity or the cost of flying speakers to your location. You do have to take time zones into consideration, and how comfortable speakers are with the technology of giving an online presentation. There's always a behind-the-scenes juggler or two making sure that everything happens as it should. In our case, the jugglers are Steven Herder and Gareth Knight. They won't be too visible during the actual webinar, but they're the ones who make sure that everything goes smoothly during the event. For iTDi's upcoming webinar, we'll start with me in Japan, talking about the changing fashions in ELT. I'll be speaking at 12 noon GMT, which is 9 pm for me. Then, we'll hop over to Turkey to listen to Özge Karaoglu talk about what she's learned from using technology with very young learners. It will be afternoon for Özge. The speaker after Özge is Ann Mayeda, back in Japan. Ann will be talking about learner autonomy. Following Ann is Penny Ur, who is in Israel. Penny will talk about effective teaching and teachers. Finally, we'll head to Ecuador for the final presentation, from Kate Cory-Wright. It will still be fairly early in the morning for Kate when she talks about action research. The audience members are also scattered around the world. So far, nearly 400 people have registered from over 65 countries. It's best to ask people to pre-register for a webinar because the only way to enter a virtual room is with a link to the room. At a conference, you give people a map to a presentation room. For a webinar, the url (link) replaces a map. As you might imagine, pre-registering 400 people and then getting them into one location (and helping everyone with connection problems) can be a big job. I'm glad that Gareth and Steven are willing to take on those tasks. People who can't afford to travel to conferences can attend webinars. All you need is a computer and a relatively fast Internet connection. That can be a challenge. The concept of having hundreds of people in one virtual room, interacting with a presenter in real time is pretty amazing, so it stands to reason that the technology would have to be pretty amazing in order to make this happen. Some people have trouble attending webinars because either their computers or their Internet are not fast enough. Luckily, there are always recordings for occasions when the technology doesn't work out. That's probably the biggest difference between a webinar and a face-to-face presentation -- the technology. First, presenters typically have to practice in the virtual room several times before a webinar to make sure that webcams and microphones work and that uploaded slides and videos play correctly. The moderator is responsible for keeping everything moving on schedule, supporting presenters when they run into technical problems, and monitoring the audience chat. The chat is where participants comment on the speakers' points, and ask questions. When you're actually presenting, it's hard to watch the chat closely, so you depend on the moderator to let you know when a question has been asked. iTDi is extremely lucky that Shelly Sanchez Terrell has agreed to moderate our Global Webinars. Not only is she extremely tech-capable, but she makes both presenters and audience members feel connected in what could be an extremely unconnected environment. She also seems to live beyond time zones, which is a plus for this kind of event. While webinars are often free, the technology is not. iTDi uses Adobe Pro Connect for our webinars. Webinar attendance is generally 1/4 of the number of people who pre-register. Our Adobe "room" seats 100 people, which we assumed would be more than adequate for our needs, since pre-registration for each of our webinars so far has remained below 400 people. We underestimated the enthusiasm of teachers around the world. It's just as frustrating to be unable to enter a virtual room as it is to be denied entrance at a conference because a session room is too small for the number of people interested in attending. Even though we record all of the webinar presentations, we still feel bad knowing that someone who wants to be in the room can't be. But, we can't afford to upgrade to a larger room, either. Enter Heike Philip of let's talk online sprl. Heike, along with Steven, Shelly, and Berni Wall, coordinated last week's Virtual Round Table. Nearly 700 participants attended webinars in her Adobe rooms. Anyway, Heike figured out how to connect two rooms so that we can double our capacity. (Heike knows her way around Adobe better than anyone I've ever met!) Now we don't have to worry about turning anyone away on Saturday. Chuck Sandy will host the crowd in our second room so that we don't miss any of the conversation or questions that come up there. It will be just like having one large room, I think! The final consideration for a webinar is promoting it. Luckily, Chuck coordinates our publicity efforts. Chuck has more friends than just about anyone I know -- except perhaps Shelly. There would be little point to the effort involved in putting together a webinar if no one knew about it. Social media makes it relatively easy to share information, as long as you have friends willing to share. In the friends department, iTDi is blessed with the best. Our Associates and friends do an incredible job in sharing information with their online networks. There you have it -- a peek behind the preparations for iTDi's Global Webinar. It's online collaboration at its best. Organizers in 3 countries have worked to facilitate the event with a moderator and speakers from 4 countries, and participants from 65 more countries. The fun happens this Saturday, April 28th, beginning at 12 noon GMT (9 pm in Japan). I'm happy to be able to say that with our new room arrangement, you can still register for the webinar and be confident about being able to find a seat. I hope to see you there! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/behind_the_scenes_at_a_webinar.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/behind_the_scenes_at_a_webinar.html iTDi Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:08:14 +0900 VRT Conference Program If you've attended conferences in Asia, you'll notice some familiar names in the program. I'll be doing a webinar on teaching writing, Chuck Sandy and Vladimira Michalkova will be talking about Supr@ise, Shelly Terrell will be talking about mobile learning, Nicky Hockly will be talking about digital literacies, and Steven Herder will be talking about innovating EFL teaching in Asia. (Steven and Shelly are also two of the conference organizers.) The beauty of virtual conferences like this is that you can also see presenters who don't often have a chance to come to Asia. For example, in my session I'll be sharing a room with Patrick Jackson in Ireland, and Ayat Tawel in Egypt. Our session begins at 10:30 pm GMT on Saturday, which means that it will be very late Saturday night for Patrick and Ayat, and early Sunday morning for me in Japan. Virtual conferences are the only way that presenters and participants from different countries around the world can share the same room at the same time without having to travel to do so. I think that's very cool. The other thing I love about virtual conferences is that everything is recorded. If two presentations you want to see happen at the same time, or if a presentation happens while you are usually asleep, you can always watch the recording later. Recordings from all of the VRT conferences are archived, and presentations from this VRT will also be available long after the conference has ended. (For convenience, I keep links to online conference archives on my wiki.) Registration and participation is free. You can sign up at: virtual-round-table.com Sessions will take place in Adobe Connect Pro. If you enter the Adobe room, you will be able to interact with the presenters (just like you do at face-to-face conferences). The links to the various Adobe rooms are listed in the session descriptions on the Events page of the VRT website. If you have problems with Adobe (or don't want to bother with it) the sessions will also be livestreamed (like watching the session on TV). Here's the complete schedule: Virtual Round Table Conference Program The times are all listed in GMT, although Tokyo time is also included. If you're in Japan, just add 9 hours to the listed GMT times. You can also use the calculator at TimeandDate.com to figure out what time GMT is for you. Hope you can join some of the presentations. Virtual Round Table is a great introduction to online conferences, and a great way to learn about technology in language teaching. Plus, you can attend sessions in your pajamas! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/the_virtual_round_table_a_free.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/the_virtual_round_table_a_free.html Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:03:53 +0900 symposium on professional development through social networking, and given a chance to do a Pecha Kucha presentation were also motivating factors :-) Living in Japan, and not having a travel budget, I really appreciate the online outreach efforts from both TESOL and IATEFL. I've written about TESOL's Electronic Village Online before, and it's no secret that I'm a fan. I'm just as big a fan of IATEFL Online. To support its annual conference, IATEFL broadcasts (and records) all of the plenaries, a fair number of workshops, and a steady stream of interviews during the conference. One day I found myself sharing a taxi to the conference venue with Marion Williams. It was during her term as IATEFL President that the board decided to make much of the conference freely available online. I asked her if they'd worried that making the conference so accessible would reduce attendance. She said that ultimately, the board decided that one of IATEFL's main missions was to make information available to as many teachers as possible, and even if fewer teachers attended the conference perhaps more would benefit from the sharing that occurred online. (Apologies to Marion for the paraphrasing--it was a taxi ride, not an interview, so I didn't take notes.) The results of that decision are impressive. While IATEFL attracted over 2000 participants to Glasgow, IATEFL Glasgow Online had over 400,000 page views from 50,000 visitors from 157 countries. While it's possible that some of the 50,000 visitors chose not to physically travel to Glasgow because they could enjoy the conference virtually, it's also true that some of the participants were in Glasgow because of the online access they'd enjoyed during previous conferences. Like me. The forums remain open for some time after the conference so that discussion can continue, and the archives are available indefinitely. If you want to get a feel for IATEFL 2012, you can read through posts from any of the 77 registered bloggers, browse through the video recordings of live sessions, or the uploaded presentation slides, or the interviews. If you're interested, my interview touches on the role of Twitter in bringing me to the conference (as well as TESOL EVO, ELT Chat, JALT 2012, and iTDi). Kevin Cleary also did a wonderful job representing JALT in his interview! There's a lesson here, perhaps. Giving access away doesn't necessarily mean that people won't be willing to pay for membership, or for the chance to attend an event in person. It may even make them more willing to pay in order to support efforts to share. At least, that's what I think. What about you? Does giving free access online help or hurt professional teacher organizations? ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/the_never_ending_conference.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/04/the_never_ending_conference.html Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:00:00 +0900 ELT for Tohoku is a group of ELT publishers and booksellers (including our own ELTBooks.com) who have so far donated 17,400 books worth more than 36 million yen. Teachers pay 50% of the list price (or more, if moved to do so) and 100% of the amount paid goes to charities that support children who were orphaned by the March disasters. Specifically, the proceeds go to Living Dreams and Ashinaga. There are still books available, so please take a look and see if you can find something you want at a great price, and help two wonderful charities at the same time. Brad Patterson is an online friend and blogger who is also part of Edulang, the folks who brought us the free SnaPanda dictionary app. Edulang recently decided to offer their other ELT applications for a pay-what-you-want price. Teachers or students can purchase a one-year license for as little as a dollar to gain access to programs to help practice for the TOEIC or TOEFL tests, or to study English with self-access podcasts. Of course, teachers can choose to pay more, because 50% of the amount goes to Room to Read, an organization that promotes literacy and gender equality in education around the world. Two places you can purchase something you might already want, and know that your money is doing some good. Do you know of others? Please share in the comments! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/03/socially_responsible_elt.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/03/socially_responsible_elt.html Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:10:27 +0900 Come Join the Electronic Village Online." If you're interested in understanding more of the "big picture" about this annual event, I recommend an article in the TESOL Italy Newsletter (pages 9-10). Registration continues through Saturday, January 8th. Sessions begin on January 9th and continue through February 12th. Descriptions of the 14 sessions being offered this year are on the TESOL EVO wiki. I'm an unabashed cheerleader for EVO because the Becoming a Webhead session is what gave me the confidence to start trying things online. In addition to introducing me to a candy store of online tools, EVO introduced me to a network of amazing teachers around the world, who are still showing me new ways to teach and learn! This year, I'll be co-moderating a session on Digital Storytelling for Young Learners with Shelly Terrell (who recently inspired people in her Mobile Apps for Digital Storytelling workshop at JALT in Tokyo) and Ozge Karaoglu (who is going to be the JALT Junior Plenary speaker in Hamamatsu in October), in addition to David Dodgson, Michelle Worgon, Sabrina de Vita, Jennifer Verschoor, and Esra Girgin. I'm quite nervous as this is another first for me, but excited as well. I'll also be doing a webinar on using technology to enhance low-tech lessons as part of the IATEFL Young Learners and Teens EVO session (on January 22nd). If you're uncomfortable with online tools, or connecting with teachers online, I hope you'll check out the Becoming a Webhead session. It's a very gentle introduction to an incredible world. If you are already comfortable online, check out some of the other sessions. There is something to interest everyone. I think everyone ought to enroll for the IATEFL YLT SIG EVO since you can pick and choose which of the speakers you want to listen to. Once again, registration continues through the 8th and the fun begins on the 9th! I hope to see you around the Electronic Village this year! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/01/tesol_electronic_village_onlin.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2012/01/tesol_electronic_village_onlin.html Fri, 06 Jan 2012 12:25:03 +0900 To Read: From Jill Hadfield, I learned about a new ezine for English teachers. English Language Teacher Magazine emphasizes practical teaching ideas. The most recent edition contains contributions by Jane Arnold, Andrew Wright and Nicky Hockly, among others. Dreams and Realities: Developing Countries and the English Language, is a book edited by Hywel Coleman, and made available by the British Council. It's available online in pdf format and on Scribd. To Watch: I learned about Teaching Channel from Judith B. O'Loughlin on one of my TESOL e-lists. It's like being invited into another teachers' classroom, and a great to get ideas about teaching techniques to try out. Ever wondered how to manage guided reading? Looking for a quick way to get student feedback on your lessons? Check out the Teaching Channel. To Attend: Teaching can be a lonely job. Webinars are like virtual workshops, and can be a wonderful way to combat isolation. Chiew Pang recently talked about this on his blog, in How to overcome the Lonely Teacher Blues. There are several upcoming free webinars for teachers who would like to explore them as a professional development option. Free Friday Webinars with Shelly Terrell happen every Friday at 6 am Japan time. Each week features a different topic. The upcoming one on the 16th will focus on using holiday music for language learning. The time is not that easy for teachers in Japan, but luckily webinars are generally recorded, so you can watch at your own convenience. International Teacher Development Institute* is hosting it's first webinar on December 17th. In the case of this webinar, Luke Meddings, Chuck Sandy, Marcos Benevides, Scott Thornbury, John Faneslow, and Steven Herder will be answering the question "What is a Teacher?" from their own unique perspectives. The presentations begin at a much more (for Japan) friendly time of 6 pm, but the sessions may already be full. So far, 300 teachers from 57 countries have registered, and there's a waiting list. Like real life conferences, there's a limit to the number of people you can fit into a venue. Unlike most conferences, there will be recordings. Following the iTDi webinar, a more informal teacher sharing webinar will take place. If you've ever attended a My Share type of event, where teachers share practical ideas from their own classrooms, you'll have a good idea what to expect from Teach Meet International. From 10 pm until midnight (Japan time, again), teachers will take 3 minutes to share something they're doing in class. And yes, it's all recorded, and available after the event (as are previous Teach Meets). To Use: And finally, an extensive collection of ELT materials has recently become free for teachers. Jason Renshaw is a very prolific and sharing materials developer. His English Raven website has a collection of over 3000 resources, including games, flashcards, ebooks, templates, and more. While he's had a "pay what you want" approach for membership for awhile, Jason has recently decided to allow teachers to access all of his materials without charge. He wrote about this change recently on his blog. Again, to the talented people who share their creations with us, THANK YOU! *In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that I'm on the board of directors of iTDi. ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/12/free_stuff_for_teachers.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/12/free_stuff_for_teachers.html Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:50:56 +0900 Recently, at the JALT conference in Tokyo Shelly shared how mobile learning motivates language learners. I thought many of the apps she demonstrated would be of interest to this column's readers, to use with both their students and their own children, and asked Shelly to share them in a guest post. Barb My mobile device is one of the best learning tools I have used with my language learners. Not only do mobile devices help improve my students' English and motivate them to speak English outside the classroom, but they carry so much knowledge in their pockets. I encourage my students, young and old, to use their mobile devices to share stories. Most cell phones have the ability to take pictures, create videos, and/or record audio, which is why they are perfect for storytelling. However, if you have access to a mobile device with apps, you may want to try these amazing free apps that encourage your students to create digital stories and have fun! Posterous- With this app, learners can include a mix of text, photos, audio, and videos as well as tags and location information in a blog post. You can share your post immediately on Facebook and Twitter! You can even allow others to add to your posts (set this up through the web app vs. the mobile app). A free version is available online as well as on various mobile devices including the iPhone, iPod, Android, and Blackberry. StoryRobe- It’s incredibly easy for children and adults to create audio/visual stories on the iPhone and iPod Touch using this app. Use the built in microphone, or any 3rd party microphone to create audio recordings with photos and videos. You have the option to upload to Youtube or send it through e-mail. If it’s in their e-mail, then the parents can easily send their child’s production to their friends! You don’t need an Internet connection to create the stories, but you do to share them! Available on the iPad and iPod. Sock Puppets- If you enjoy playing with sock puppets, you'll love this app that allows students to create a sock puppet show. Choose the sock puppet characters, personalize the characters by adding your voice, select the scene and props, and record a video. Send this by email or upload to Youtube. Watch this great example. Available on the iPad and iPod. StoryKit- Create an electronic storybook by drawing on the screen, uploading images, recording sound effects and voice, laying out the elements of the story (text boxes, images, paint, and sound clips) freely by dragging them or pinching to resize, reordering pages, and uploading to the StoryKit web server. Email a link to the story. The application includes four public domain children’s books to rewrite and rearrange into a new story. Available on the iPad and iPod. Animoto- Upload up to 10 images, choose a soundtrack from the library (many nice holiday tunes to choose from), and click a button to make a 30-second video. Sync your videos with your Animoto.com account, download videos for offline viewing, and make longer ones with an All-Access Pass. Available on the iPad and iPod. I have only listed 5 apps here, but I include many more digital storytelling apps in this presentation, Kids Sharing Stories: Mobile Digital Storytelling. If you are interested in learning more, I'll be co-moderating (with Barb Sakamoto, Michelle Worgan, Ozge Karaoglu, Jennifer Verschoor, Dave Dodgson, Esra Girgin, and Sabrina de Vita) a free 5 week Digital Storytelling with Young Learners online course to learn how to use several more apps and web tools. The session will be one of the many offered through TESOL Electronic Village Online. You can learn more about it, and the many other sessions available, on the TESOL EVO wiki. Shelly Sanchez Terrell ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/12/five_fantastic_apps_for_storyt.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/12/five_fantastic_apps_for_storyt.html Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:15:36 +0900 Vladimira Michalkova shared the idea with Chuck Sandy, and it grew. When Chuck, Shelly Terrell and I were looking for a project to demonstrate the power of Personal Learning Networks for our upcoming JALT presentation, The Happiness Project was a perfect fit! The idea is simple. We want teachers and students to make a “happy poster” and share it on The Happiness Project blog. You’re welcome to use a tech tool like Glogster, Muzy, Animoto, or Fotobabble (or any other tool that you enjoy). You can also simply submit a photo or drawing. The goal is to share happiness, in whatever format you feel most comfortable using. So far, we have contributions from Slovakia, The United States, Korea, Peru, China, Argentina, and Japan. Send your finished contribution via email. The subject line in the email message will become the title of your post (“Barb’s Happiness”, for example). Attach an image of your poster or project, and a link to where it’s hosted online (if appropriate). Hopefully, The Happiness Project will provide an easy way for students to participate in a collaborative online project, to see how far a network can reach, and to spread some happiness around the world along the way! Chuck, Shelly and I hope that you’ll also join us in our presentation showcasing the Happiness Project at JALT . Cengage Learning ELT has generously donated one of their time slots so that we can talk about Collaborating with Educators Around the World on Saturday, November 19th from 11 to 12 in room 309. Vladimira will also be at JALT this year, sharing a pecha kucha about another of her fabulous ideas for making our classrooms happier places, “Surpr@ise” (Saturday evening, November 19th, between 5-7 pm). ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/11/crowdsourcing_happiness.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/11/crowdsourcing_happiness.html Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:25:49 +0900 Wiktionary data set. Ninjawords is fast. My students enjoy typing in a word and getting a quick, usually simple definition. The words within the definition are also clickable so students don't face the problem of getting a definition that's more difficult than the word they're trying to understand. Students can listen to the words, too. I appreciate that Ninjawords has a variety of voices providing the pronunciation models. Shahi combines the definitions from Wiktionary with images from Flickr, Google and Yahoo. Students type in a word and get a definition plus dozens of related images. In some cases, the images help my students get a feel for a word, like "gigantic" or "broken" but in other cases it's more interesting to try and figure out why someone decided a particular image was a good choice for a particular word. I've also had students look at the entire pool of images for a word and decide on the best and worst images to illustrate meaning. Shahi can be a rich jumping off point for many activities, but students can't hear a spoken model. They have to pop over to Ninja words for that. The Simple Photographic Dictionary is another picture dictionary using Wiktionary definitions, but it combines the definitions with Creative Commons images to clearly illustrate the entries. The curators credit photographers, and have a wish list for entries that need still need photos. It seems to be doing with photos what Wiktionary did with definitions--harness the power of collaboration to create an amazing resource. I do wish there were more links to photos from within definitions, for example, being able to click to see a soccer field, player, ball, or uniform from the main entry about soccer. And, I wish students could hear the words as well. But, wishes aside, the Simple Photographic Dictionary is pretty incredible. It's also safe for my young learners to use. What online dictionaries have you used with your students? How have you used them? Please share your favorites in the comments! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/10/dictionaries20.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/10/dictionaries20.html Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:05:51 +0900 Save the Words, powered by the Oxford English Dictionary. You can find words to adopt and use. (I adopted vanmost, quaeritate, and rivation--you can look the meanings up on the website, too!) Brad Patterson may be an even bigger language geek than I am--he is certainly more knowledgeable! If you enjoy browsing the Oxford English Dictionary (and honestly, who doesn't enjoy browsing 20 volumes of etymology?) you'll enjoy Brad's blog, A Journée in Language. I always look forward his posts about the history of words (and he is much easier to read than the OED). If you like playing with graphic language visualizations, you'll have fun playing with Wordle. You can copy and paste any text (a poem, a story, your dissertation, class survey results, etc.) into the word cloud generator and create a beautiful graphic. It's also a great way to for check main idea since the size of words in the cloud is based on their frequency in your text. You can also copy and paste a website address and get a picture (literally) of what you'll see on that site. This is what my blog, Teaching Village, looks like as a word cloud: It's pretty easy to see what my guest authors and I generally write about! I got the idea for creating a blog word cloud from a workshop Dave Dodgson recently did for Virtual Round Table. If you're interested in learning more about this fun tool, I recommend watching the archived recording of Dave's workshop, Not Just a Pretty Cloud: Using Wordle in the Language Learning Classroom. It's easy to get lost on the Lexiophiles website--they have a ton of stuff for language geeks. The Topics Overview Page is a good place to start if you've never visited Lexiophiles before. I've recently enjoyed reading about loan words in different languages and idioms around the world. Lexiophiles also curates lists of language related blogs and podcasts. The lists are compiled annually, and ranked by popularity (as determined by votes), and are a great place to discover some language treats. This year, Lexiophiles has added language-related Facebook pages and Twitterers to the lists. Note: Voting for this year's Language Lovers continues through Sunday, May 29th. Brad Patterson and Oxford Dictionaries have both been nominated as top language Twitterers, and Teaching Village has been nominated as one of the top language learning blogs. If you'd like to vote for Brad (@brad5patterson) or for Oxford Dictionaries (@OxfordWords), you can do so here , and if you'd like to vote for Teaching Village, you can do so here. If you don't like voting in competitions like this, or you decide to support someone else, that's fine, too. But do visit Lexiophiles' lists to explore some great language-geeky gems! What other websites can you recommend for the language geeks among us? Please share your favorites in comments. Thanks! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/05/fun_websites_for_language_geek.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/05/fun_websites_for_language_geek.html Fri, 27 May 2011 10:48:35 +0900 I first heard about the earthquake on Twitter, and that remained the best source of "live" news in those early hours after the Big One and subsequent tsunami. If you're interested in a good read about Twitter as a lifeline, Clarissa has an excellent post about Twitter's role during the disaster on her blog, Talk to the Clouds. Following Twitter on the night of the 11th felt a bit like following the social media version of ham radio broadcasts--messages sent out to whomever might be listening. With thousands of messages each second, it was a bit difficult to identify a singular voice among the many. Facebook, in contrast, was like the centrally located bulletin board where messages were posted, and where people could interact with those messages. Think of circles of friends and family, with overlap. Interestingly, when landlines were down, people were able to access Facebook (and Skype) on Internet-friendly mobile phones. Facebook was where people checked in. Facebook was where people checked on people who hadn't yet checked in. In the aftermath, circles of connections grew, as friends added friends of friends. It was a real life lesson on the value of networks. In the days following the quake and tsunami, Facebook became an information hub. Ad hoc groups like Disaster News Straight from Japan for English Speakers posted English translations of Japanese news stories. Relief organizations like Hope, Peace Boat, Second Harvest, and Animal Rescue Japan made it easy to follow their efforts, and successes, by posting updates and pictures on their Facebook pages. When disaster strikes, it's good to have Facebook friends :-) How about you? How did you use Facebook, Twitter, or Skype during or after the quake? Please share your stories in comments. We'd all love to hear them! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/04/when_facebook_becomes_a_lifeli.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/04/when_facebook_becomes_a_lifeli.html Wed, 27 Apr 2011 16:30:35 +0900 Twitter in Plain English or look at Can Twitter Make You a Better Teacher? Ultimately, Twitter is just another tool for teachers, and how you use it determines whether you think it's brilliant or inane. Luckily, teachers are always finding new uses for Twitter, both as a teaching tool and as a forum for professional development. Some of my favorite things to do on Twitter include: Chatting Hashtags make it possible to follow discussions on twitter, and to search conversations for information and links that might have been shared when I wasn't online. I've mentioned #ELTchat before, which is a moderated discussion that happens each Wednesday at 12 noon and 9 pm GMT (which is 9 pm Wednesday and 6 am Thursday for us in Japan). Other moderated chats I enjoy following include #ELLchat (more ESL), #Edchat (more general education), and #ntchat (for new teachers). I check #twinglish to talk with folks using Twitter to practice English, and #edtech to see what cool new ideas are floating about. Tags mean that I don't have to be on Twitter to see what's being talked about by teachers. Collaborating Twitter makes it very easy to collaborate with teachers around the world. One of my favorite projects happened serendipitously. I helped my young learners create an alphabet book on Voicethread, and then sent out a tweet (message) asking people to add words to the various pages. The response amazed me. Within days, my students were able to listen to words in a variety of English flavors. Then, a technology teacher in New Jersey adopted our alphabet book as a project for her first grade students, providing students in both countries with an authentic global connection from a very young age. I would never have met Kim if not for Twitter. You can read about this ongoing project on her class blog. Because the alphabet book is online, it continues to grow as words are added, and it can be shared by any class. Searching and Discovering Most of my most interesting resources come from links shared by teachers on Twitter. It's a lot like having a search engine whose results come with recommendations. I save my favorites in my social bookmarks on Delicious, and on my Teaching Village wiki, so I can find them later (and just as importantly, so others can find them). If you use an application like Tweetdeck to display your Twitter feed, it's easy to filter results to show only those messages with shared links--click on "filter this column" at the bottom of the column you wish to search, enter "http" and you'll see all the links that have been shared in that category. What if you're not quite ready to dive into Twitter? There are a couple of easy ways to enjoy the benefits of shared Twitter wisdom without having to deal with the noise of multiple simultaneous conversations. I've mentioned Tweetchat before, as a way to monitor #ELTChat dicussions. You can enter any hashtag, in multiple Tweetchat windows, to "listen in" on any conversation that uses tags. Another way is to subscribe to a newsletter than collects and publishes links in a newspaper format. It's a nice graphic way to see what's happening on Twitter. I recently created a newsletter for my Starter PLN list on Twitter. The Starter PLN is a list of about 100 educators I recommend for teachers starting out on Twitter. I've chosen them for two reasons--they share great information and they're friendly and helpful for newcomers. By subscribing to the Starter PLN Daily you'll receive an email each day with a link to a new edition, filled with all the links categorized by topic. Even if you are on Twitter, a newsletter like this can be a nice way to save links for future reference. What about you? What are some of your favorite ways to use Twitter? ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/03/so_whats_twitter_good_for_anyw.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/03/so_whats_twitter_good_for_anyw.html Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:46:35 +0900 EFL Classroom 2.0 is like walking into a huge teacher supply store, and discovering that everything on the shelves is for EFL teachers, and it's all free! Since David Deubelbeiss started the group three and a half years ago, it has grown into an active community of 20,000 teachers from around the world. Members share specific ideas for teaching, links to resources from around the web, and inspirational stories about education. You have to be a member to see most of the goodies, but membership is free. I always lose track of time when I browse through the resources. I don't know of any website, anywhere, with as much educational content for EFL teachers. Not even David knows how many things are actually listed on the site, but he does know that some of the activities have been downloaded well over 10,000 times. There are multiple ways to search the site, but I generally have the best luck when I start with the site map. Young Explorer magazine, which is going to be a great motivator for an animal-adoring reluctant reader in my class. Then, I came across a word family sorting activity from Read Write Think that will definitely come in handy with my emergent readers. Then, of course, I had to peek at the karaoke collection and found a new gem to download for my senior class. Oh, that Fling the Teacher game I mentioned? If you search for the game by name, you'll get several pages of game variations, plus a tutorial so that you can create your own version of the game (and then post of EFL Classroom so other teachers can use it, too). Here's the World Cup version my soccer-mad students loved. I hope to meet you at EFL Classroom 2.0. Take your time browsing the site and meeting the teachers who are part of this vibrant community. I'm sure that you'll find some unexpected treasures, too! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/efl_classrom_20.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/efl_classrom_20.html Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:46:04 +0900 The first ELT Chat was held in September of 2010 and since then over 31,000 tweets (messages of 140 characters or less) have been shared using the #ELTChat hashtag. Hashtags are what allow people to follow discussions or conversations on twitter. You can read more about the creation of ELT Chat on Marisa Constantidides - TEFL Matters . Marisa (@Marisa_C on Twitter) is one of many teachers who volunteer time to organize and moderate the chats. Each week, teachers suggest and then vote on topics to be discussed. The number one choice becomes the discussion topic for the first chat (Wednesday 12 noon GMT / 9 pm in Japan) and the second choice becomes the topic for the later chat (Wednesday 9 pm GMT / Thursday 6 am in Japan). If you're already on Twitter, you can set up a column in a Twitter application like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite so that all Tweets with the tag #ELTChat show up together. Here's what mine looks like on Tweetdeck: During the hour dedicated to each chat, this column gets very, very active as teachers around the world weigh in on the discussion topic. You don't have to contribute to the discussion in order to enjoy participating--it's fun just to follow along. If you aren't on Twitter, you can still "listen in" on the discussion by visiting the ELTChat Room at Tweet Chat. The page updates regularly with all tweets tagged with #ELTChat, so between discussions this is a good way to see what kind of links and resources ELT teachers on Twitter think other ELT teachers will be interested in. While I enjoy sharing ideas with other teachers during the chats, I believe that ELT Chat's greatest value is in the way the discussions are archived. The live chats happen quite quickly, and there's little time to enjoy the links that are shared during the discussion. And while I am sometimes awake at 6 am for the second chat, I'm rarely coherent enough to participate in anything more demanding than drinking coffee and checking email. Luckily, transcripts of the chats are preserved on the ELT Chat website, and (even more luckily) volunteers summarize the main points and links. The ELT Chat site is becoming a rich information resource for each of the topics that has been discussed. It's pretty amazing to look at the summary for a discussion and remember that all of that was done in messages of 140 characters or less! I've joined the moderator team for the first (9 pm in Japan) chat, and my Twitter buddy Chuck Sandy is almost always there as well. We're @barbsaka and @chucksandy on Twitter. If you've participated in an ELT Chat, please add your thoughts (and Twitter ID) in the comments. I hope you'll join us on Wednesday nights to see how ELT teachers are leveraging social media for professional development! ]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/twitter_and_elt_chat_professio.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/twitter_and_elt_chat_professio.html Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:46:08 +0900 The online adventures of a not-so-techie teacher. While I’m still not very techie, I have learned a lot online, and when Russell Willis offered me a chance to write a regular column about my cyberspace explorations I jumped at the chance.

Some of my faves...



In future installments, I’m going to introduce my favorite websites, resources, and tools for growing as a teacher, creating materials for classes, and teaching. This certainly won’t be an exhaustive list (like “50 ways to edit photos online”) because there are other people already doing those kinds of lists much better than I ever could. This is a place for me to share specific resources I’ve found useful, and tools that I have tried and liked. I’m partial to things that are free and easy to use, so most of my recommendations will be things that are free and won’t take much time to learn how to use.

While I’ll be introducing my favorites here, I do update my wiki regularly with new tools and resources. So, if you’re looking for sometime specific that I haven’t mentioned here, you might want to check there. And, if you’re interested in reading more about how I learn about new resources from my personal learning network (PLN), I invite you to explore those posts on my blog.

I hope you will join me in this new adventure by sharing your own recommendations for web resources teachers will love—just remember my bias toward free and easy to use! Post your suggestions in comments, or contact me directly. If I use your suggestion, I’ll be sure to give you credit!

]]> http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/about_this_column.html http://www.eltnews.com/columns/barbs_bits_and_bytes/2011/02/about_this_column.html Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:49:22 +0900