Monday, July 14, 2008

Tag clouds

What is a tag cloud? It is a frequency map consisting of words. They are often found on social networking sites, usually for tags, to indicate how popular a topic is.

How could I use it? A recent article by Stockdale on the Internet TESL Journal gives ideas for how to use a tag cloud to introduce a reading.

How can I make a tag cloud? Try tagcrowd. As long as text is digital, it will turn it into a tag cloud. Below is a tag cloud made using the URL for this blog!


created at TagCrowd.com

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Podcasts used with UI and Adv students

These are some of the podcasts that my students have enjoyed this term. I put one up each week on Blackboard and encouraged them to listen for homework. You need to do a bit of searching to find what suits you and your students.

Karen's podcast souNZ English

BBC learning english podcasts
Talk about English: Better Speaking
Grammar challenge
How to
6 minute English

Other podcasts
Breaking News English
ESL pod
Missing Person

Authentic
Radio NZ podcasts

It would be good to add a comment or two here on which ones you find useful.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Voicethread

Just sharing a new tool - voicethread.com

You post a photo and then can add comments (oral or written) to it. Other people can come and write/record their comments. Useful for putting up a class photo and get people to introduce themselves. Or photos of a class outing, and get people to talk about what happened. You can have a whole series of photos so could create a story line.

Or students could create their own and talk about their country, family etc.

An example that I'm using with my students is at Jan 2008. Browse though, as there are lots of different ways of using it.

Watch out - works on my desk PC and in some classes but not all. Supposedly should be working in labs with new 2007 build - remains to be seen!

One good feature is that you can record yourself in different persona (ie using more than one image to post) if you want. Interesting to think about this!

Would love to hear comments if you get to use it.

2008 - year of the practice group

OK a bit over due, but here we are at the end of Feb already.

We met last week, a few of us and talked about plans for this year. I suggested that we split into smaller groups of particular technology interest, and so far the two practice groups are

podcasting - Mel G and Karen H
Smart boards - Lisa S and Grete

Contact any of us if you are interested in coming along for the ride. Expectations are that you will be practising CALL in these areas, or at least learning/exploring along with us. We envisage meeting each other over quick coffees or computer stops or classroom spaces to share how we are going and what we are doing, with a focus on the pedagogical affordances of new tools (sounds flash, but just means what the tools can do and what we want to use them for in class!) Of course, you might want to start your own little practice group - feel free, and let us know here. So the CALL CoP official is distributed over practice groups this year and we'll come together for a joint meeting in Nov to chat about next year (2009 - how scary is that!)

Hopefully as we learn, we'll be able to share with you what we think works - for us and for our students. Watch this space!