I have discovered screencasts recently and since then I've tried a lot of different things. But I didn't try to give my students a feedback over something using this kind of tool.
The video I'm posting here is the first one I've ever recorded in this area. The students that made the posters I show in the video are starting to study English now, so this is not the video I will show them, and that's the reason I intend to do another version in Portuguese (and have fun a bit more creating screencasts).
The screencasting world is something I really want to explore a whole lot more and be sure that you will hear from me, and screencasts, soon!! :)
I've heard from a teacher, some time ago, that the only songs he/she would bring to the classroom were the ones he/she liked, because he/she was the one that would have to listen to it over and over again. Ok, I agree that sometimes it's really boring to listen to a song you don't like many times. But I don't think we should simply ignore our students preferences. Let's just remember that motivation is a clue word when talking about learning.
Well, I do as I say. Because of that, every time I start with a new class, at the first class, I ask my students to fill in a form, answering about several things they prefer. The only problem I've always had was how to check the results after that. I used to spend so much time putting the results into graphics using MS Word (I'm not a good fan of MS Excel, so I used to suffer a lot!!).
But today, I discovered paradise!! I discovered Obsurvey!! This is an online tool that you can use to create your surveys, from basic ones, to bigger ones, like mine!! And after the survey is done, and your students have answered that, the website collects the responses and gives you the graphics just the way you want them: in the shapes you want, you can save, print, publish, whatever you want!!
I got so excited that I didn't even saw the time passing while I was transforming my old paper survey into an online survey!!
Please, take a look at that!! Feel free to answer the survey, to suggest other questions or simply add a comment about that!!
Some time ago, when I was in college, a teacher of mine told me about Mind Maps. At that time, I didn't like it very much, even after she showed our class how we could use it in classroom. Some years have passed and here are the Mind Maps in my life again. But now I can see perfectly how wonderful this tool can be.
The teacher I talked about made me work with a web tool to create Mind Maps, but I completly forgot what was that. I just remember that it was ugly, just simple lines, black and white. Well, I want to show you something that will catch your student's attention a little bit more. I'm talking about Mindomo. This is a web tool you can use to create Mind Maps. But it offers a lot of resources, even if you are a free user. You can add colors to your text boxes, you can add pictures, videos, hyperlinks, notes and a lot more.
I've created one Mind Map to use as a Brainstorming activity about Second Conditional Sentences. You can use this to make students think about some possible situations, and they would, at the same time, practice the grammar structure before they know how it is structured. It would work perfectly if you had a projector in class.
The only bad thing about this tool is that it can't be embed to the blog. But you can print the screen and add it as picture, as I did here. I recommend you try it yourself!!!
I said before that I really love photos. And avatars are kinda like photos too, not taken, but created. So, I love to work with avatars as well!!
This week I've discovered two tools to create avatars. The two of them are pretty easy to use and, after the avatar is created, both of the websites send the avatar to your e-mail.
This is important because, in case you decide to ask your students to create the avatars, you can ask them to send to your e-mail after it's done and you'll have the student's production as quickly as they're finished. Besides creation, you can use these tools for descriptions too. You can ask the students to describe each others avatars orally. This way, they would practise not only the subject you're teaching, but they would improve the skpeaking hability.
Oh, and the best thing about this websites is that you don't have even to sign up to start the fun!!
Here are my two avatars I've created using Face Your Manga and Doppel Me. Give it a try too!! You'll love it!!
