Busy Busy!!

I haven’t really had a lot of time to post here, even though I’m only working in one school now I’ve got quite a few things to do. I’ve been showing my students some Web 2.0 sites they can use as part of their English courses and looking for some other stuff that looks fun and interesting for them to use too. Mainly the last week or so I’ve been trying to get my students interested in using Quizlet more. I really like this site a lot, it fits in just fine with my ESL classes. Some of the students have already started using it and like it a lot. Others I haven’t really had the time to sit in front of the pc with yet and demonstrate it but I’m slowly getting around to it. Roberta’s students also seemed interested in using it too so I added the vocabulary for her to try with them and next week we’ll see what they think of it and try to encourage them to use it more as part of their home learning. I also chatted with my students about things like blogging. I’d already tried to get some EPG student’s involved in this but although we got their WordPress accounts all set up, they moved to another part of Brasil and I have lost contact with them   Some of my advanced students liked the idea a lot but their time is limited as they are studying at uni at night and working in the day. I chatted with the about maybe using something like Twitter. I like this site a lot too and the idea of small text message like postings might be easier and more appealing to them. I have extra class with them over the weekend so I’ll demonstrate it to them in the break. It would be better if the other teachers were also more interested in using Web 2.0 more in their classes but generally they haven’t really shown much interest in it. I have quite a bit of stuff online for my students in wiki’s, blogs, etc. Most of it is for advanced or MEC groups but it could be easily added to for beginners if they tried it out. Sometimes I get the ‘If you do it for me I’ll use it’ impression from people but I don’t really have a lot of time for the things I have online for my own students and Roberta’s too. I’ll have to see about getting some of them to spend some time looking at what is already there so they can see how much it would help them out. I think for the beginner teachers they really need to look and see what else is out there because we seem to lose quite a few students after the 1st semester whereas I haven’t lost any of mine and I think this extra online stuff shows that the teacher is interested in help ing them to get as much of of their classes as they can. Hopefully as my students start to use the online sites more and more, the word will get around and the students might ask their teachers for more online resources for them to use too.

Self-recording

I was trying out Odeo last night, it wasn’t very successful though. The site took a long time to load, recording wasn’t all that good and it wouldn’t save afterwards. I thought it was maybe my internet connection but other websites loaded just fine. I switched over to Podomatic instead and found that they had ftp so I could record on my home pc with Audacity ad then upload straight to their servers – a lot better   I set up a new WordPress site that will mainly host the links to the podcasts so that my student can easily find them. I have to type up some questions for the students to read as they listen so they can test their understanding of what they are hearing. I’ll ask Roberta to record a few too, I think it’ll be good fun hahaha!! I was trying to find a good theme in WordPress for the site, I was really looking for a three-column theme so I would have plenty of extra space to add other things outside of the main posting area. I found one that was being used in a WordPress site that Roberta reads/listens to a lot that had a really nice theme. I didn’t really want to use the same one but I couldn’t find one that was similar   I’ll use this one for now and change to another later on.

I have to get the texts from my student that he wants me to record for him next week, in the meanwhile I’ll try out recording myself and see how good/bad I sound   My students from Cambridge get a cd with their student book and if its installed onto a pc you can listen to a model and then record your voice to compare to the original. Some of the children said they sounded really strange after hearing themselves recorded for the first time hahaha!! They still experiment with it though, I think its good for them to want to try out this kind of stuff at home so that they don’t have a fear of new technology.  I1ll have to see if I can find some kind of game or activity we can do where the students get to record themselves, I’ll browse the internet to see what I can find if I have time over the weekend.

Conversation class

I work at two English schools and one of my students has class only on his own with either myself or Roberta. He learned English more or less by himself and mainly our classes consist of conversation classes, one with me and one with my wife. Today he asked if he could give me some texts and if I could record them onto a cd so that he could listen to my voice as he reads along with the text. I like this idea a lot, I’d already toyed with the idea and after the Easter hols I’ll get him to print the texts for me. I already have the program to record the mp3s so I can convert them to an audio cd with Nero. I’m going to use Audacity for this, it’s free and very easy to use. I had a few problems finding how to record in Odeo but a friend of ours uses it a lot and gave me a few pointers. I’ll try both online and with the audio cd too, just because I’d like to try the Web 2.0 side of it as well I have a book of texts and short stories that I’ll record and upload and then use a WordPress site to host them for my students to use. I think it’ll be a lot of fun experimenting with this Although I’m British I speak both British and American English with an accent that seems to float somewhere between the two of them, my students tell me that its easier to understand me sometimes than the Models hahaha!! I’m not sure what my voice sounds like recorded, this should be good for a laugh

Classroom 2.0

I have been a member of Classroom 2.0 for a while now. It’s a website dedicated to teachers who are looking for other teachers using Web 2.0 stuff to pass on information and share new ideas. I like this site a lot. I always discover something interesting in it that gives me a lot of ideas for things to do with my students. I have been thinking about using WordPress with a few ideas I got from the Classroom20 forum to create a kinds of podcast site for one of my newest English students. My main class with him usually consists of the two of us reading a book together, first I read and then he reads so that he can listen to my pronunciation so he can correct this. The second class he has in the week is with my wife, Roberta. This class is mainly because my Brazilian Portuguese sucks and they cover all kinds of things that we don’t include in the class with me. I am toying with the idea of creating some podcasts of short stories for him to listen to, either online or to download, as well as some questions about the podcast story to see how much he understood. I have downloaded a program to use to create the mp3s, I decided on Audacity. It’s not a big download and is easy for me to use without any complicated setups, etc. I think it will be a lot of fun. Maybe I’ll expand this to use with my other students later I’m going to look again for a site to host the mp3 archives. I tried a couple but wasn’t too impressed with them hahaha!! I’ll have a look during the week to see what I can find.

Internet problems…

I’ve been having some problems with my internet provider here in the city. Well more than a little, it hardly works. It took me a couple of days to finally get into WordPress. We’ll call them this afternoon to tell them to get their arses out here to solve the problem.

This week I took on a new private student who more or less learned English by himself and now wants to have someone to practice with. He needs to practice reading and listening to so he usually brings texts with him and we work on them together, alternating between him and I taking turns to read the text and my correcting his pronunciation. I’m going to make some podcasts for him to use as well, At the moment I’m looking for a good place to host the mp3 files and them I’ll link to them in another WordPress blog that I’ll create just to use with him, well with only him just for now. I’ve been checking out Odeo and also Podomatic to see how their service is. I’ll probably search around a few teachers forums to see what they are using as well.