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Showing posts from April, 2005

Learn a Song ESL Podcast

I posted about this on my podcasting EFL blog , but thought I'd add it here too. Spotted! a second ESL/EFL podcast . This one is the Learn A Song podcast for ESL students , and is part of Charles I Kelly's site 'Interesting things for ESL Students' Each podcast features one song (usually a traditional, folk song) and comes with lyrics and notes on pronunciation, etc, which are featured on the website.

Blogstreams Salon Special Session

Come and join us for the Blogstreams Salon Special Session ( Tappedin ASO *) on Sunday May 1st at 21:00 GMT . We have invited Peter Ford , one of the coordinators of the Blog Project at the European Centre of Modern Languages, to tell you how he and his team have been exploring the use of peer-to-peer collaborative online writing environments in the context of foreign language education. The main goal of the project - currently in a pilot phase (in French and English) with teachers and students from Malta, Czech Republic, and Poland - is to develop a blogging tool with specific features tailored to the needs of the foreign language-learning environment. Peter Ford has taught and managed ICT in both UK and international schools, and is now an educational consultant at ICT4Schools, an organization he co-founded to help realize the potential of ICT in education. He is particularly interested in the opportunities provided by weblogs and other browser based techonologies... * After Schoo

Podcasts for EFL / ESL learners

I haven't been posting much lately, as I've been looking at / listening to a lot of podcasts, trying to figure out how useful they might be to English language learners, and even if it's worth trying to get learners themselves involved. I've been doing that on my Yahoo360's blog . And relating to this new tool from Yahoo, I'm not convinced yet... There are things I do like about it (see the blog for more details), but there are more things I don't like about it. At least, I don't think I'd use it with students. Check out my Yahoo360 blog for more on this, and on podcasting.

Yahoo 360 & Podcasting

Yahoo 360 is the new blog/photo managment/networking etc. tool from Yahoo . Like Gmail , it's invite-only ( want an invite to this or to Gmail? Just let me know ). I've been trying it out by blogging about podcasting and ELT. Go here to read my Yahoo 360Podcasting ELT Blog. I've also set up a podcasting-friendly Feedburner RSS 2.0 feed for the site , although at the moment, there are no podcasts to download. Podcasting is something I've been wanting to try for a while. I think I'm finally going to give it a go, to see if it's worth the time and effort of pursuing in my EFL context... I have a few ideas for using it with students, especially as a lot of my students use personal mp3 players, and may well be interested. I introduced one of my classes (the students studying Audio-Visual subjects) to the concept of podcasting as a mini-webquest-discovery activity, and asked them to record their findings/opinions on their blogs. I also let them listen to extracts f

Malaysia Primary and Secondary school blogs

Dot MacKenzie recently shared some interesting blogs via the Webheads group : Jawishools is a blog dedicated for primary and secondary teachers in Malaysia. It contains links to resources that may be useful for teachers. The second blog is one containing writing from primary schools in the PPD Jawi district of Malaysia: http://allwritejawi.blogspot.com Dot continued in her post... "I have used blogs to present links to teachers, and to put children's writing online...The children had no help from teachers when they were writing. I collected their written work, corrected it, and then inserted it in the blog. More will be added to both blogs as it is written."

SaveAWave and embedding audio (WAV) into a web page

SaveAWave "is a simple, web-based sound recorder for voice messages. You can use it to record voice emails, memos, or voice files to put on your own web pages." I didn't understand it at first as I used the Firefox web browser to access the web page. Once I switched to Internet Explorer, however, the ActiveX download started and I could see the controls in the top left-hand corner... I found it extremely easy to use, and using the useful instructions on how to embed an audio file into a web page produced this test audio file: width=240 height=45 classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" type="application/x-oleobject"> name="MediaPlayer" width=240 height=45 src="voice_message_test" AutoStart="false" showcontrols="1"> Interestingly enough, at first I had problems with the code - I found that parts of the code were showing up in the published blog, and the player wasn't working. Then I wonde
Isabel Perez is an educator whose ESL site is very popular, and includes many online activities, exercises, etc. It's particularly popular in Spain. I've just found out that she has a blog, although it looks like it's not been updated since November. A pity. Please start blogging again, Isabel!

Podcasting

This morning, I've been looking at Podcasting ( a combination of iPod + broadcasting ), thanks to Barbara Ganley's post on the subject on her excellent blog, bgblogging . Thanks to Barbara, I read this great introduction to podcasting by Brian Lamb of the University of British Columbia, which made me wonder just how I could (and if I should) introduce some of my students to podcasting. As far as I know, I don't have any students who have an i-pod, but... ...depending on the class, a large proportion of them (90% I'd say) do seem to use personal MP3 players. As Brian Lamb says, the "success of Apple's iPod (and a host of other portable and mobile devices capable of storing, playing and now recording sound files) means that audio can now be accessed by the user anytime, anywhere." He also notes that "the emergence of new tools that allow an individual to create and share sound files quickly and inexpensively, without specialized expertise." The