Do you glog? Reinventing Posters with Glogster Edu

Posters have always been considered a valuable resource to stimulate students' creativity as well as an opportunity for teachers to know what students' have learnt. Do you remember when we created posters using a cardboard, crayons, coloured pencils, pictures taken from magazines, and so on?

Much time has passed since then and with the revolution of technology we have "discovered" many useful tools which can make learning more engaging for our students. Don't our students spend most of their free time at their PCs? So, why not combine the effectiveness of web 2.0 tools to give them more autonomy to create their own projects in which they will be the speakers, the writers, the editors, and the introduction of interesting topics our students are interested in?

If you are curious to find out how technology tools can enhance your teaching and involve your students in their English learning process, you should use Glogster Edu:

• It allows teachers and students to create digital posters.
• It is free.
• It is safe.
• You can add pictures and graphics from the Internet or from your own computer.
• It is possible to add videos from the Internet or from your own computer.
• You can record your own voice, so it is perfect to record an interview, a speech, a recitation of a poem or a song.
• You can write your own texts to express yourself.So, Glogster Edu is wonderful for creative projects but also for reflections on cultural and social topics.

I honestly think this is one of the easiest tools I have worked with and the possibilities to incorporate it in the English class are endless. In addition to this, as Glogster Edu was created with an educational purpose in mind, it ensures that all the content students view is appropriate. You can supervise our students' projects as well and both you and your students can comment on each other's glogs, print them and embed the glog in your classroom blog or wiki.

What are you waiting for using it?

TUTORIALS:

• GlogsterEdu Video Tutorial by Copiague Middle School.
• GlogsterEdu Tutorial by Traci Blazoski (Google Docs).

GLOGSTERS CREATED BY TEACHERS:

• To introduce yourself to your students by Sean Banville.
• To show your students's works - Ozge Karaoglu's kindergarten students telling their stories.
• To create your own digital portfolio by Ozge Karaoglu.
• To introduce grammar tenses by Sunrise651.
• Lesson Plan on Food for primary students by Sunrise 651.

GLOGSTERS CREATED BY STUDENTS:

• Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Phones by xoxoMadzxoxo.
• Helping Family by s9sy2gh.
• Portfolio by Nurin Adlina.
• Create an interactive cookbook (Webquest final task) by Rubilime.
• Greatings from the World Project
• A Trip to London - Maria Markaki's Class.
• The Airport Project by Mireia Molina (4º E.S.O.)

TEACHERS' NETWORKS:

• Education Glogster - Ning Network.

MY STUDENT'S GLOGS
Ángela -6th Primary


Laura - 1st ESO


Lucía - 1ºESO


María - 5º primaria

MY GLOG

This is a Glogster I created myself as an example for 1º Bachillerato students' project at the end of a didactic unit dealing with Rudyard Kipling, conditional sentences and the situation of people living in developing countries. The purpose of this project was that students wrote their own poems based on Rudyard Kipling's poem If and recorded them, and wrote a short biography of Rudyard Kipling.

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Docking at the Right Harbour

Have you ever had problems to find useful resources on the net for teaching English? Have you ever wonder what are the best ESL/EFL resources, the best Edubloggers in the English teaching field? Many times when we want to use Internet as an education tool, we get lost due to the great amount of information contained on the net. In order to avoid this, Gorka Palazio, professor of the University of the Basque Country, has developed two great sites: English Harbour and English Tube.

English Harbour, a RSS website where you will find a selection of the best content for English teachers and students. This tool captures the last posts of top English edubloggers. Therefore, you can be up to date with these teachers' experiences in the classroom and with advances in new technologies applied to English teaching. But the advantage of visiting English Harbour is not only to read interesting post written by other ESL/EFL teachers or ELT proffessionals, but also to interact with those teachers who are interested in the same topics that you are. In this way, we are contributing to create a real learning virtual community, which can be expanded Twitter. The URL of Twitter is English Harbour.

However, if you are looking for new resources, English Tube can add visual spice to your University lessons mainly. After class, your students can continue learning English at home, in a cyber café or wherever they wish, watching videos on this site. The videos, which have been taken from the major video services such as Youtube, Blip, Vimeo, Veoh or Metacafe, are organized by level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and by skills (grammar, listening, speaking and writing).

One thing I love about English Tube is that its content is really well-organized. Besides, it is an interactive site in which students can leave their comments on the videos they have watched. I hope that this is only the first step to expand and create a bigger English Tube full of videos for primary and secondary students, as well. A great idea would be that all those useful videos included subtitles, and there was an option to show or hide them depending on the student's English level.

Expocampus 09 Palazio

View more presentations from palazioberri.

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Top Ten for Education. Number 3 is for Voicethread

How many times have we listened that a picture worths more than one hundreds words? What about using pictures and words thanks to a great tool like Voicethread?

Voicethread is a great tool for collaborative projects since it joins picture and voice in slideshares, it is like an interactive media album. Students can leave comments using voice, text or video if they have a webcam, therefore it promotes asynchronous discusion about the topic which is being discussed. Besides, teachers can decide if they want to publish their Voicethreads presentations to share them with other teachers or keep them private.

This web 2.0 tool allows teachers to know better to their students, interact with them in a lively way and learn about their interests, hobbies, worries, etc. And, on the other hand, students can practice the language, discuss about interesting topics with other students and teachers, contrast opinions from different perspectives and enrich their learning experience.

If you would like to know more about this tool I recommend you to watch the following Voicethread:

What is Voicethread anyway?



Some ways to use Voicethread in education.

If you are interested in knowing more about using Voicethread in the ESL/EFL classroom I recommend you to visit the following Wiki where you will find really useful examples as well as the Webheads and friends at TESOL 2008.

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Top Ten for Education. Number 2 is for Blogs.

As Tiscar Lara says in "Cuadernos de Comunicación e Innovación" magazine, 'Weblogs have a great potential as a tool in the educational field since they can adapt to any discipline, educational level, or teaching method'. Besides, what makes weblogs attractive for ESL/EFL educators is that students can take control of their learning process, express their ideas and interact with their teachers and other students in their same class or in English speaking countries. Therefore, students are exposed to real language what is really stimulating for them since they feel English is something real and not something they can only use in the English classroom.

But, what is a weblog or blog?

A blog is a free personal website where a person or a group of people usually write posts, include videos, personal opinions, slideshares, links, photos, gadgets, news, I mean, it is like a personal online diary. However, blogs were not created for education but they give teachers a great amount of possibilities to interact with the students, to motivate them with activities the teacher adds to the blog. Blogs have become a collaborative tool for information exchange and reflection on the topics studied in the classroom.

Nevertheless, a blog should not be just something for students to do when a teacher doesn´t know what to do in the classroom but a tool for achieving the persued learning goals. Effective teachers have to give simple and clear explanations if they want their students accomplish the activities in a successful way.

Teachers can use all kind of resources for the activities: videos, photographs, comics, website links for carrying out a researching task, etc. However, teachers have to organize, categorize and order resources to avoid "cognitive overflow". If we ask our students to search information for an specific topic on the net they can get lost since they can find a lot of information on the net but they cannot distinguish between high quality and low quality sources. A blog allows teachers to organize information through categories, structure information in an easy and quick way.

Advantages of using a blog with your ESL/EFL students

1. Teachers can interact with their students in the target language outside the classroom in an easy and fast way.

2. It is a way to give voice to your students to express their opinions, ideas and upload the work they have done in class, for example.

3. Students are actively involved in their learning process.

4. Teachers in non-English speaking countries, thanks to the net, can have access to real material for their classes and include it on the class blog.

5. Teachers can expand their classroom boundaries and their students can go on working wherever they want.

6. Students can get 'feedback' on their works from the teacher.

Ideas to use a blog outside the classroom

1. Divide your students in small groups (3-5 students per group) and ask them to create a blog for publishing the project they have been working on. Create a questionaire to know how your students have worked, if they have enjoyed the activity, what they have learnt, etc.

2. With adult students, you can organize and international classroom language exchange with other English teachers to know cultural similarities and differences with British, French, American or Portugues people, for example.

3. After a reading and discussion in class you can ask your students to create a new story using stripes, they can draw the story or use Toondoo for doing this task. After that, they have to publish them on the blog and other students have to decide which story is the best.

4. After introducing a reading about London city, you can tell your students they are going to London only for three days in July. They have to work in small groups. London is a very big city, therefore, they cannot visit all the interesting places there. They have to decide when are they going to visit London, what kind of clother are they going to take in their suitcases (you can include a link to a weather report website from U.K), what places are they going to visit (include a London guide website), where are they going to stay (bed&breakfasts, hotels, hostels, Inns, etc). They have to interact with the other students to take all these decisions. When they have finished the research, they have to publish a summary on the blog. With this activity they can review vocabulary (clothes, weather) and grammar (going to).

5. You can provide your students with a reading from the web uploading it to the blog and ask them to write a summary.

You can find more information in More Blog Ideas.

Disadvantages of using a blog with your students.

1. Not all students have internet access at home.

2. Not all students have a homogeneous NTIC knowledge.

If you are interested in this topic you should visit this Web 2.0 in the Classroom Blog entry called "Using Blogs to Promote Authentic Learning in the Classroom"and "Blogging for ELT" by Graham Stanley. They really worth!

Would you like to integrate blogs in your English classes? 

You are always welcome to contribute with your ideas!!

Next: Top Ten for Education. Number 3 is for Voicethread.

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Top Ten for Education. Number 1 is for Wikis.

Today, surfing on the net I have found a very interesting article in the 'Transforming Education through Technology' journal, called Top Ten Web 2.0 Tools for Young Learners written by Chris Riedel. My aim with this post is not making a list of Web 2.0 tools but giving some ideas to use them in the classroom since we, teachers, need to share new pedagocial ways to introduce technology into the curriculum.

I would like you to contribute with your ideas as well.

1. How can we use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom?

2. What projects or activities have you developed with your students using them?

3. Have they enjoyed them?

4. What has been the impact on your students?

5. What problems have you found to adapt them to the curriculum?

Thanks for your help!!

What are Wikis?

A wiki is free software which allows you to create a website in a simple way for you and your students. You and your students can edit text, links, powerpoint presentations, multimedia content, videos, photos... since it is mainly a collaborative tool. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia where people from all over the world edit information about everything you can imagine (literature, science, biographies, history, cities...).

How can we use wikis in the classroom?

1. A wiki can be a great tool to collect all your students class works, similar to an electronic porfolio.

2. You can upload a video about the topic you have introduced in class and write some questions about the video. The students have to write their answers in the wiki. You can use the "To Do" feature in the wiki if you want they work in pairs.You can use the forum to communicate with your students. Interaction is an important part of the learning process, if you don't interact with your students they can feel themselves isolated.

3. If your students are adults you can set up an online discussion about culture (a film you have watched in the classroom, food, a book they have read...). After that, they can work in a webquest about the same topic and complete a task such as a short video with their vision about the topic the video deals with, a film summary with their point of view, a multi-cultural recipe book...

4. You can contact other ESL/EFL teachers in a different country and start a project to know cultural differences. Your students can learn to value other cultures or the culture of the language they are learning, English.

5. Students can collaborate in small groups (4-5) on reports, presentations, sharing links for a related topic, writing a story, etc.

Interesting: ESL/EFL Wikis on the net.

Movie Reviews (For students)

Connecting Across Continents. Implementing Collaborative Projects in Your Classroom.

ESL for primary. (For teachers).

Let's TIC English (In Spanish).

Daniela Munca's ESL Funland.

Miller's English. A wiki used for assignments.

Isabel Perez's Students Wiki

British School, Primary, New Delhi

Wikigogy. A wikispace for ESL/EFL teachers to share lesson plans, activities, ideas, etc.

TEFLpedia. A wiki for EFL teachers.

Article about using Wikis: How to use a Wiki? (In Spanish).

Video: 'Wikis in Plain English'

Tomorrow, next Top 10 Web 2.0 tool: Blogs.

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Internet4Classrooms

What is Internet4Classroom? A long time ago two enthusiastic American proffesionals, Susan Brooks and Bill Byles, began a collaborative project to help teachers to integrate New Technologies in the classroom in an effective way but it was so great that it arrived to the net for all of us in 2000.

What can we find on this wonderful site?

1. A site map with all the site items organized alphabetical order.

1. Online tutorials to help teachers to use programs such us Work, Powerpoint, etc; pedagogical tools such as Webquests; multimedia authoring tools such as Hyperstudio, a tools which allows you to integrate text, voice, pictures... and others.

2. In the same section, there are lessons as well which include useful examples and tips about how to use them in the classroom and many resources you can find on the net.

3. Resources classified by level and subject.

4. A great list of Web 2.0 tools (podcasts, wikis, blogs, bookmarking, etc).

This is a great project on how teachers can take advantage of New Technologies in an easy and educative way.

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WEB 2.0 TEACHERS?

Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Mark Prensky.

Many things have been written about how Web 2.0 tools can increase opportunities for learning in a cooperative way, improving critical thinking and communication between students, and between students and teachers.

Nowadays, competent teachers in the New Technologies usage are needed in Education in order to make a difference in the classroom. We should not forget that our students are “digital natives”, therefore, as Carina Grisolia and Claudia Marisa Pagano says in their article “WebQuests, Wikis y Blogs un trío que se las trae!” –“chalk and blackboard are not enough for teaching” (la tiza y el pizarrón no son suficientes a la hora de dar clases). However, teachers have to rethink the learning process introducing new learning strategies and methods based in New Technologies to motivate our students.

Technology by itself doesn’t change and improve the way our students learn; we can have classrooms full of computers, with the most innovative programs, and go on with the methods we use in face-to-face classes, I mean, magisterial classes. Therefore, we need new pedagogical approaches in order to our students learn in a cooperative way, and this is just possible if teachers learn to think web 2.0 networks educatively. This means, as well, to change the teacher’s role.

The teacher is not an "encyclopedia" anymore, but the person who helps students to achieve their goals teaching them to work in a cooperative way (webquests, wikis, blogs…). Cooperative learning is just possible with WEB 2.0 tools. Web 2.0 has expanded the class boundaries to create social and educative networks on the net where teachers and students work together to create and share knowledge, whereas Web 1.0 was about passive viewing of content. Students love project works in which each one has a role, since they feel they have a responsability. They enjoy and learn doing things and strengthening bonds with their classmates and teachers!

If you are interested in this topic, you should read these articles and book:

CSCL, Theory and Practice of an Emerging Paradigm by Timothy Koschmann.

Cooperative Learning in Foreign Learning Teaching

Cooperative Learning from Journal of Vocational

and Technical Education

This lovely picture has been taken from Rachel Smith's presentation Digital Natives and Visual Practice at the 2007 IFVP Conference.

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Web 2.0 tools for ESL/EFL teaching

Nowadays, our students are digital natives, that is, "children who were born into and raised in the digital world", children who spend a lot of time surfing on the net, chatting with their friends, playing computer games... This is not learning, but what about changing this? What about teaching them to use the tools they can find on the net to learn English?

I am sure that if every student could use these tools in order to learn English and acquire knowledge, not only at school but also at home, anywhere, his language would improve very quickly. The teacher's role is to help students to be more independent, to reach their goals in their learning process and this can be done teaching them to use web 2.0 tools in an appropriate way because this is the new 21st century literacy.

web 2.0 tools for ESL/EFL teaching (how to become web literate)

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: 2.0 web)

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MOODLE, WIZIQ and more- new ways of expanding your physical classroom boundaries

Nowadays, we are exposed to a wide range of Information Technology in our homes. Citizens of the future who lack technology skills will be at a severe disadvantage since confidence with Information and Communication Technology is part of the New Literacy for the 21st century. Teenagers spend more time surfing on the net and are fond of it. Therefore, teachers has to rethink their ways of teaching and adapt to the new social changes because Internet has brought a revolution to teaching and learning.

But, how can technology help in the learning process?

One of the possible answers is through Moodle. Moodle is one of the most used "virtual learning environments" to teach online courses or as part of on-site education all over the world by 1.851.889 and 26.745.838 users. It was developed by Martin Dougiamas to help to create a social constructionist approach in education and a new way of learning. This platform, which has be

en used since 1999 can be useful to interact with your students who live in the same place or who live in different countries. Besides, Moodle is an open source course management package that is free.

What are the advantages of using Moodle?

I have not used Moodle as a teacher but I discovered its advantages as a student, in one of my literature subjects at the University last year, and it helped me a lot in my learning process.

1. The teacher can enroll all here/his students.

2. He/She can upload tasks to develop in groups or individually at any time and in any place. You can choose the last date to upload the task to the platform. For example, in my class, the teacher uploaded some poems and the students had to write a literary essay about it. I think it is very comfortable since when you have finished it you can send it to the teacher in just one click. Besides, students can access safe materials in a personalised environment.

3. He/She can include a chat to discuss some topics explained in the class, wikis, podcasts or group discussions for collaborative activities.

4. He/She can upload documents or videos to help students in their learning process.

5. A forum can be also included for different questions. The whole class had to create a glosary with 18th century literary terms.

6. Students do not feel so shy, at least in Spain, to contact the teacher as they do in class.
7. Students can contribute to whole class initiatives.

8. Teachers can also include news about interesting topics related to the school, high-school, university or to the subject.

9. Teachers can follow their students' progress, how much time do they spend on the platform, what places have they visited in the platform, when they upload an assignment or post a comment on the forum.

10. Moodle offers students the opportunity to instant message other friends in the class, edit their own profile, add their photos, create their blog.

In this

link you will find moodle tutorials to learn how to use it and a book called Using Moodle written by Jason Cole and Helen Foster.

But what else can Moodle offer to teachers?

As Manish Verma said "Moodle is an asynchronous tool", I mean, Moodle is a platform where the teacher can u

pload Word, PDFs documents or online learning resources to make easier to the students the information access. However, there are many other tools, like Wiziq (free software), which allow synchronours cooperation, that is, which allow teachers to share text, audio and video with the students in the virtual classroom and viceversa.

These tools provide integration with moodle and this is what makes moodle to be a real VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). One of the advantages which Wiziq provides to Moodle is that you can "use features like live audio and video communication, text messaging, whiteboard with drawing and writing tools, PowerPoint, PDF and Flash file sharing and privileges to transfer control to any participant independently"(1) what can be more interesting for younger students. Learn how to do it!

What are the advantages of using Wiziq in the Moodle platform?

1. You can use it to view public sessions given by experienced teachers on a great amount of topics or interact with other teachers or students in a live discussions via online conference.

2. You can upload your own Power Point presentations.

3. The sessions are recorded, therefore if you cannot be on time you can follow them later.

4. Teachers can view other teachers lessons to know what other teachers are doing and take ideas to improve their own ones.

But there is also one disadvantage since using just the Moodle platform you do not need to be on the computer at a particular moment but with the Wiziq tool you have to be there. Besides, it is only in the beta version.

For more information about Wiziq you can visit its blog or watch this video:


As for Moodle, there are also tutorials for learning to use Wiziq. Another live e-learning software is Elluminate which was created in 2000. Here you will find information about how integrate it into the Moodle platform .

But there are more tools like DimDim (free web meeting service based on the open software platform is another web 2.0 launched one year ago). Here is the guide to integrate it with Moodle.

If you are interested in similar tools: tutorom, iknow (for languages) or Yugma (not free).
Some teachers are still reluctant to integrate new technologies in their classrooms? Why is so difficult for some teachers to accept this change?

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