A teacher's diary

Writing poetry to reflect on learning

2012-02-12T20:52:00.003+01:00

To reflect on what they have learnt during the lesson, my students sometimes spend the last part of the lesson writing a short poem, the cinquin.

The cinquin consists of five lines which don't rhyme. I first explain how to write each line:

name the subject (usually one noun)

describe the subject in two words (two adjectives)

three verbs that describe actions related to the subject

a phrase consisting of four words that express the student's feeling about the subject

one word which is a synonym for the subject and summarizes once again the topic

The form of the poem looks simple but to write a good cinquin you have to reflect and analyze critically what you have learnt and how you feel about it. To create your poem, you go throughthe notes, think about them and search for the right words – you only need a few of the most important.

I usually do the activity in pairs. First, each student works on his or her version for approximately five minutes, then they share their poems with partners. In pairs, they talk about their creations, discuss the reasons for using different words and create together one poem, using the parts of the poems they first had. When they finish the poems, they share them with the group.

This is a cinquin I wrote about British Council’s Bogathon, a very interesting event that took most of my free time during last four weeks. Just like my students during the last part of the lesson, I tried to express my thoughts and feelings about this event. This cinquin was born in the first hour of the last day of Blogathon:

Blogathon
Creative, up-to-date
reading, writing, reflecting.
Great Teachers All Win.
Sharing.

Keen on professional development ? Play this game!

2012-02-03T11:23:00.007+01:00

There are games for all possible situations in the life and for all kinds of players. People gamify their reality for all sorts of reasons: for the feeling of happiness games give , intrinsic reward, a purpose… Why not play a game and work on our professional development?

“The School“ is a game to help encourage continuing professional development for EFL teachers and it offers some serious possibilities for all aspects of efficient professional development.

The author, Paul Braddock, organized the contents of the game in five “Rooms“, plus the Staffroom and the Resources room. You start in Room 1 and win points going through a series of real-life and online challenges and gain access to new classrooms and new challenges. Just as all other games, this game has a goal: to work your way through all the rooms in one academic year and win the respect of your colleagues.

The resources room is a room where you find a lot of useful tools for teachers to use and learn about. Of course, you gain points for adding to the collection. The Staffroom is a place where you find regularly updated links to relevant articles, discussions, blog posts – every teacher's dream-come-true staffroom.

The registration is free. I like the goal and the rules. My plan is to join and I hope to collaborate with some of you in some projects, webinars, peer observation tasks and other challenges of the game.

My first QuizStar quiz

2012-02-02T00:57:00.001+01:00

I've tried a new online tool for creating quizzes and tests - http://quizstar.4teachers.org/

QuizStar is a free site for teachers by teachers. You can register as a teacher or student. Teachers can create classes and assign them quizzes. Classes can be public or private, teachers can register their students or students can register themselves to take quizzes. If your class is private, you have to accept every student in it, if it is public, everybody can enrol. The site offers the teacher the possibility to view every student’s performance, to edit the quizzes and to import other teachers' quizzes with their permission.

When you register, everything is simple. You click on Class Manager icon to create a class. I decided to call my first class after the name of my school, Hribar 7, so that students can find it easily. I left it public. My students will register to take the quiz. The quota is 25 students.

In Quiz Manager I created a new quiz. It is done by filling in forms. The questions can be multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions. In my first attempt I did not add any media or hints with the questions. I might edit the quiz later.

The title of my quiz is “Taking a Break“, because it tests some vocabulary about holidays. My students will register and search my name, the name of the class or the title of the quiz to take it.
Let's see if they like it.

ProProfs Quizzes for students

2012-02-01T22:44:00.003+01:00

My students often say that everything online looks better than on paper, even tests. That's why I started writing online quizzes and tests. We still write paper tests, of course, but a quiz from time to time is a nice change. There are a lot of free and easy to use online quiz creators and one of them is ProProfs (http://www.proprofs.com/)

You need to register to create a scored or a personality quiz.
A scored quiz can be one of various different types:
- Multiple choice
- Checkboxes
- True/false
- Fill in the blanks
- Essay type
- Matching
You can include media or other supplementary teaching material and import questions from other quizzes.

Once created, your quiz can be embedded, you can link to it , email it or just print it and use the paper version.

The free version of the account gives you 10 reports of your students' attempts, including time taken and their score. If you want more reports stored for you, you can always upgrade your account.

I created this simple quiz last year. Now I think about editing it to use with a new group of students. It is very simple, with the purpose to check if the students have acquired some basic vocabulary before going on with the topic. If you like quizzes, you can take it:

Caring for our planet » quiz

After you finish the quiz, you can print a certificate with your name and score, or share it on facebook or twitter. Students like it:)

Language acuisition is a form od ecsasy

2012-02-01T12:18:00.001+01:00

Two days ago I listened to Stephen Krashen's live presentations in Adobe Connect. Mr Krashen is an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of California. He is best known for his theory of second language acquisition and as the co-inventor of the Natural Approach to foreign language teaching.

The first presentation, “The Comprehension Hypothesis vs. The Skill-Building Hypothesis: Why accept a delayed gratification when the gratification never comes?“, was very interesting.

The two ideas are quite opposite. According to the skill-building hypothesis, you learn about the language and practice grammar and vocabulary. Hard work and discipline pay off after some time.
Stephen Krashen claims that we acquire language when we understand it. His suggestion for learning a second language is: relax, listen to stories, read good books, the result of all the comprehensible input is learning the language. Learning is a pleasant experience.

He added some proof in the form of research results which show that in tests related to communication, comprehensive approach gives better results, in grammar tests, the results are equal or better. His papers can be found on his website: www.sdkrashen.com

Mr Krashen talked more about reading and his speech was music to my ears. Reading is the source of our reading and writing ability, vocabulary, spelling and grammar competence, he said. The most powerful form is free voluntary reading.

A lot of food for thought.

Gamifying class management

2012-01-27T01:15:00.002+01:00

I love webinars – learning and meeting colleagues from the comfort of my study, at odd hours sometimes, but with everyone in a good mood, is one of my favourite forms of professional development.

I attended one earlier this evening. Kyle Mawer, one of the authors of “Digital Play“, the book I'd recommend to every EFL teacher, talked about digital games in the classroom. I have already bookmarked some sites to check over the weekend and find those that work for my students.

During the speech K. Mawer once mentioned Class Dojo describing it as “gamifying class management“. That can't be wrong, I thought.

I registered as a teacher on Class Dojo and started a class. The teacher adds students and their names come with avatar icons, there is no need for real pictures. The second step is deciding on what to reward in the students' behavior. Participation, creativity, helping others are some icons for positive behaviour, and you can add more. Negative behaviour is being late, interrupting, disrespect, no homework, or whatever else the teacher adds.
If you display the in-class view, you can see all class in one screen. You should display the page on a whiteboard, projector or laptop and give or take points to students during the lesson. The teacher's smartphone, tablet or iPod touch can be used as remote control to award points from anywhere.
The page also shows report cards and all behaviour reports can be emailed to parents or printed.

Cool, isn't it?

Playing in the virtual sandbox

2012-01-26T00:42:00.002+01:00

When we create a blog or a wiki for students, our aim is to help them learn outside the classroom and become more independent in learning: we add useful links to practice grammar, consult a dictionary, improve skills. Students do the assignments and then they look for some online fun.

I think it is a good idea to offer some fun activities that in students' eyes don't look like lessons, but being in English and appropriate for their age and level, help them improve their English without noticing it.

These are some fun activities I offered on a class wiki:

Free Rice – you play a vocabulary game and for every answer you get right, ten grains of rice are donated to help end hunger. It is easy to add their banner to spread the word about the programme and allow the students an easy access.

Draw a Stickman! – you draw a character who interacts with you to help you tell his story.

Build Your Wild Self – Animal lovers can add some animal parts to their human portrait and learn about the animals in the process.
I mentioned the fun page to the students. Now I listen carefully to their comments and add a new activity from time to time.

Sharing with other teachers

2012-01-22T00:26:00.001+01:00

Teachers who care find various ways to share. One of them is Blogathon, others are social networks, conferences, real life and online events. I have recently found out about TeachMeet sessions.

There are no real-life TeachMeet events in Croatia or in the region, so I didn't know much about that way of professional development until December, when a group of teachers started online editions of TeachMeet Int'l, in English, and TeachMeet Regional, in Croatian.

TeachMeet is an informal professional development event during which teachers tell other teachers about their projects, ideas that worked or web 2.0 tools they use in their teaching. They do it in the form of three-minute presentations. Moderators invite presenters one by one. Presenters turn on their web camera and microphone, control the previously uploaded slides and present in voice. The teachers who haven't signed up to present just join to listen, like you join any other webinar, following the link.

I listened to the first international edition held on December 17 and was fascinated. There were 22 speakers from 15 countries. All presentations were very interesting. You can read about it on http://teachmeetinternational.wikispaces.com/

The second edition is scheduled for March 3. I have signed up to present this time and I'm looking forward to it. “There is no delight in owning anything unshared“, I read in a message advertising a TeachMeet event in the UK and I can't agree more with the anonymous author.

The Technology Integration Matrix

2012-01-21T00:56:00.001+01:00

I have been browsing The Technology Integration Matrix http://fcit.usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php).

I came across the matrix during “Digital Tools in the Classroom“ TESOL EVO professional development course, where my task was to reflect upon where I am and where I would like to be according to my educational context.

The matrix, originally created to help support the integration of technology in schools in Florida, associates the characteristics of meaningful learning environments with the levels of technology integration.

I think my use of digital tools in the classroom is on Adoption and Adaptation levels, although I would like to find myself more in Infusion and Adaptation cells in the future. My students are actively engaged and collaborate, but I'd like to help them with more constructive learning, doing authentic tasks and integrating school assignments into their lives outside school.

I believe the times we live in and teaching “digital natives“ are good reasons for teaching with the help of technology, but reflecting, discussing and learning with and from peers, help us make the most of it.

So, where do you see yourself in the matrix?

Creative Writing Tools - Scholastic Story Starter

2012-01-19T00:46:00.002+01:00

I've explored Scholastic Story Starter

This tool seems like an interesting tool to try with my 11-14 year-old girls and boys learning English as a foreign language, to practice writing in a creative and fun way.

The task comes in four levels: K-1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4-6th. You choose a level and start the adventure: you find yourself in front of a strange looking machine with four wheels you can spin with a click of one of four buttons or you can decide to click a big button which causes all parts of the machine to spin at the same time It looks quite amusing and game-like.

Every time you click you choose one part of your writing task:

Form ( Write a postcard/ letter/ invitation/ to-do list,… Describe.., Write a funny/horror/.. story …)

An adjective describing the main character (brainy, nerdy, young, old, stubborn, …)

The main character of your story (movie star, rock star, dentist, weasel, gorilla, …)

A part of the plot – a dependent clause (…. who writes murals, … who ages 20 years in one day, …)

I had a lot of fun spinning the wheel over and over and these are some tasks I got for level 4.6:

Write a to-do list for a know-it-all president who explores a newly discovered planet

Write a horror story about a greedy president who discovers she has superpowers

Write a postcard from an unpopular vampire bat who ignores orchestras
Write a brief biography of an old rock star who hitchhikes cross-country

What I liked about the tool:

a lot of creative ideas for writing

visually attractive for students

activity can be done in the computer lab but also printed or with one computer and a projector

activity can be done in different ways, the tool gives only the idea and the template for writing and allows the teacher a lot of space for turning it into a lesson

if written on the given templates, stories can be printed and look very nice because students can use drawing tools, too

the tool is free.

Possible problem I've noticed:
- stories can't be linked to or embedded, only printed.

Let Me Introduce Myself - Ms Blogathon Newbie

2012-01-17T12:54:00.003+01:00

My first post in British Council's Blogathon 2012:

The first thing to do in a new company is to introduce oneself. That's what we do in the classroom, introductions are the topic we use at the beginning of every new course with new students. We are also asked to introduce ourselves during various professional development courses we attend or groups of teachers we join.

I have decided to share with you two of my introductions in TESOL professional development courses, which, in my opinion, could be successfully used with students. Both involve the use of learning technologies, images and a bit of writing and I enjoyed not only creating them, but also reading other people's introductions, too. Also, I got a lot of comments, which gives me the idea that the introductions like these can be used as a starting point for other activities in the classroom, too.

BigHugeLabs and My origins : http://flic.kr/p/7xLNTg

I am a big fan of photography and I use Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) a lot. Playing with your own photographs is great fun, too. To make My Origins photo I used Mosaic Maker option (http://bighugelabs.com/mosaic.php ). To complete my introduction and illustrate the photo, in “Images4Education“ group last year, I added a little poem :

I'm from the blue sky
and the blue sea:
the line between them is me.
I'm from the white stone
of the mountains and streets.
I wear a perfume of
the lemon blossom and roses
from my mum's garden.
When I add to it
some basil, or thyme or rosemary,
I just smile
and call my mother.

My 3,2,1 Animoto Introduction: http://animoto.com/play/UOvL8HSAOmxfl6RDVTtlXg

This year I am participating in TESOL EVO again and I created a 3,2,1 Introduction for “Digital Storytelling4Kids“ group. It is an Animoto video. Animoto (http://animoto.com/ ) is a free tool which combines photos, text and music. The tool is free for creating 30-second videos, but there is an Edu option, which gives educators full-length video creation for free. I've already tried it with my students and they loved it, too.

I hope you have learnt more about me through this post and perhaps got an idea how to use one of the tools I suggested to create an introduction or to ask your students to introduce themselves in a different way.

Taking part in the TeachingEnglish Blogathon 2012

2012-01-09T00:22:00.005+01:00

I've just registered for my first blogathon, the blogging marathon that will take place on the TeachingEnglish site.

I got the information about it from British Council Croatia and read about how to take part on their site. I got interested for two reasons:

the winner gets an all expenses paid trip to Glasgow to attend the IATEFL teachers' conference in March

even if I don't win, it helps a lot with my New Year's resolution to blog more regularly.

My task is to write posts from 16 January until 12 February, about the topics like

dealing with disruptive students,

keeping teacher talking time down, so students speak more than we do,

networking with colleagues nationally or internationally,

some other topics related to teaching. Of course, my posts should be interesting to other teachers.

I've read carefully the tips for writing, which advise:

original content,

friendly and informal style,

posts which are quite short, not longer than 250 words,

tagging posts so other participants could find them, read and comment ,

attractive titles,

referencing any external sources,

bullets and paragraphs to make posts readable,

checking out blogs of other participants to comment on their posts.

I quite like the idea of writing for a period of time with a group colleagues as readers in mind, who will check out my blog from time to time (at least I hope so!).

I guess I'm ready for this blogging adventure.

Talking widgets

2012-01-04T20:53:00.002+01:00

A tweet by a teacher and teacher trainer from Greece I respect very much, Marisa Constantinides, made me want to check the web page she mentioned as a good place to use to practice listening, http://www.acapela-group.com/index.html. I clicked on “Demos and More“ to see what kind of help in teaching listening they offer.

There is a number of possibilities for the use of this site. There is no price list but I didn't get the impression the services are expensive. If I created a lot of material, I'm sure I would send them an email explaining my needs, because what they offer sounds very interesting: help for visually impaired users, easy vocalization of newspapers and other materials, talking stories, “word wizard“, games... I'm sure even teachers who create a lot of materials for listening practice can use this service well, but I'm not one of them: I use a lot of listening exercises that come with the course books and also a lot of free listening materials from the Internet, so I haven't paid for creating my listening materials so far.

What I found useful was a talking widget. When I needed voice for my online communication with students, I have so far used only Voki and liked it a lot. While checking this site, I noticed a possibility of creating a talking widget and I decided to try it.

Creating a talking widget is very easy: there is a space for your text and I typed the text I wanted my students to hear. Then I chose the language and voice with one click of my mouse – English, Lucy, UK. All I had to do next was to choose the colours and the size for my widget and get the embed code.

My talking widget

talking widget by Acapela Group

audible value

I quite liked the widget: it took me only a few minutes to embed it, the sound is good, it looks nice on the page, and it is a lot more attractive way to post a message to students than a written note.

When I compare it to Voki, it is much simpler because there is no creation of the avatar, which can be good and bad, depending on how much time you have and how attractive you need your widget to be. Voki also gives you the opportunity to record your own voice, which is a nice feature and makes the widget more personal, not to speak about endless possibilities of its use as a speaking exercise, when students record their messages.

My Voki

An example of a Voki a student created

To sum up, I liked the simplicity and quality of this talking widget, but I immediately remembered the amount of language, computer skills and fun involved in the creation of Voki. I missed it here. In the part where these two can be used to achieve the same goal, they remain very different and both with a lot of possibilities for creative use in language learning.

2011-11-20T22:55:00.004+01:00

Our One Day on Earth on PhotoPeach

To participate with my young students in One Day on Earth project, I asked my students to take photos of some school activities on November 11 and write short comments of their photos.
My 11 year old students, Nela, Lovro, Anka and Lana brought their cameras and took some photos. I took some photos, too.
Today I have chosen the best photos and the comments and created a photopeach slideshow. I'm going to show it to the students tomorrow and give them the opportunity to make some changes if they want.
Then we can share it on One Day on Earth and IEARN official pages.

21st November

I've finally managed to find time and upload the photos to One Day on Earth page. I could not upload the photopeach slideshow, so I uploaded all the photos, wrote comments and created an album.
I like the idea of documenting an ordinary day.
This is the slideshow:

Find more photos like this on One Day on Earth

Creating an embeddable discussion forum

2011-09-24T23:17:00.002+02:00

After trying several times, without any success, to create a discussion forum with Tal.ki, I tried Nabble (http://www.nabble.com/) just once and succeeded.

Now I have a forum to embed into the wiki I'm going to use with my students this school year (http://weplayandlearnenglish.pbworks.com/)

Creating a forum with Nabble takes a minute, it is very easy and free. I have created two threads: one for students' introductions and one for asking and giving help with posting in the forum.

Now I can't wait to read my students' first posts

Only a Game - Samo igra (in Croatian)

2011-06-12T00:21:00.000+02:00

Trying Voxopop with Students

2011-06-03T22:57:00.003+02:00

I first tried voxopop while attending “Becoming a Webhead“ course, one of the courses TESOL offers every winter. It's a tool that allows people to create a profile, form a talkgroup and invite other people to discuss a topic. The tool is free and the registration easy. The process of recording a message is very simple and intuitive..
When guests or members visit the talkgroup, they can listen to all or some messages and add their own, if they want to add to the discussion.
This is an example of a Webheads talkgroup
I immediately liked the idea of using it with students: students can practice speaking and listening, the learning situation is authentic and it seems to make learners become more responsible for their language production.

Last year I tried to use it with my students for making introductory messages:
Hello from Croatia:
It wasn't a great success. The group had only 5 members. Even if it wasn't a very successful use of a tool, I noticed a lot of advantages:

• Ss tried hard and were motivated to listen carefully and pay attention to their own pronunciation.
• They were immediately aware of every mistake they made and wanted to correct it. It was quite OK for me to correct, they were very cooperative.
• They were interested in correcting other students' mistakes and didn't see it as a threat or a sign their friends were not loyal to them for talking about mistakes when I could hear.

There were also a lot of disadvantages:

• Ss complained that although it looked easy to record a message, it happened a few times that something went wrong and they felt discouraged after a few tries and stopped trying, logged out without saving a message
• Shy students did not even try; they listened and promised to record their own messages but never did.
• It was difficult to organize the recording in class because everyone wanted all the others to be quiet and it became time-consuming to record more messages at school.

This month I am trying to use the tool again and possibly better.

My new task, Village Life in Croatia, is a part of our presentation of Croatian culture on our Talking Cultures Wiki.

I prepared everything to help my students. Now they are all members of our talkgroup. I thought of their usernames and passwords so I am sure they can't forget them.
We are going to record the messages in class, but this time everyone with a limited time to record his or her message.
We have already prepared the messages. We talked about the topic and after the discussion I let them write their thoughts on a piece of paper. I checked the sentences. All the messages now wait for our next lesson.

I am going to give my students some time to practice saying their prepared sentences before it's their time to record. I'm going to encourage them to combine reading and speaking. I know that some of the students will need their paper only to remind them what they originally wanted to say, while some will stick to reading. I'll say it's OK to read. It's their first recording for most of them and they have plenty of time to improve.

Talking Cultures

2011-05-16T00:47:00.005+02:00

"Talking Cultures" is a very interesting project by British Council in which four pairs of classes from different countries collaborate on four identical wikis. Students describe different aspects of their cultures and learn about their partners and their country and culture.

A group of my students has been collaborating with a partner class from Armenia. We started our work in January and have so far covered, or started writing about, most of the topics.

Time has come to help my students with the last task for this school year - describing village life. School ends in June.

I hope we'll finish all the tasks. Then, I'll add the feedback survey answers to my thoughts and impressions during the six months of work with students.

Even before I do it and reflect on how and what to improve, I can tell that the work on a wiki with students, even if they are as young as my 14-year- old boys and girls, is great fun and a lot of learning at the same time.

Time to think about holidays

2011-04-15T23:33:00.006+02:00

I have used this card as an example how to do the writing task I set to my students: create a trading card as a postcard-style report.

This is what the task says:

• Think about how and where you are going to spend the week around Easter

• Take or choose a photo representing a holiday activity or place you are visiting

• Go to BigHugeLabs and click on Trading Card to create one

• Upload a photo; write a title, a subtitle and a sentence or two describing the idea behind the photo

• Create your card and share it on our Talking Cultures Wiki Holidays page.

I hope my students will enjoy the activity. I did.

The Butterfly Project

2011-03-23T22:11:00.010+01:00

“In an effort to remember 1.5 million children killed in the holocaust, Holocaust Museum Houston is collecting 1.5 million handmade butterflies. The butterflies will eventually comprise a breath-taking exhibition, currently scheduled for spring 2013, for all to remember Butterflies may be of any medium the artist chooses, but two-dimensional submissions are preferred. Glitter and all glitter-related products should not be used. Food products (cereal, macaroni, candy, marshmallows or other perishables) also should not be used. “

I heard about this great project through Ms Debora Ryther, a teacher from Texarkana, Tx, who did a great job informing teachers- members of E-Pals, about the possibility to join with their classes, and collecting the butterflies from all over the world, which she is going to pack and ship to the museum before the end of the school year.

I immediately joined forces with an Art teacher in my school, Mr. Ivan Lasic. He did a great job giving instructions to the children about the artistic side of the project – the creation of butterflies.

This slideshow contains the most beautiful butterflies, already sent to Texarkana, to be part of the great exhibition next spring. Looking at them makes me really proud of my students – both for supporting the idea and for creating such beautiful works of art.

2011-03-18T00:10:00.003+01:00

I've started exploring different fun ways of telling stories I can use with my students.
What I want to do is:
- visualise phrases or sentences,and make them a better start for a discussion, or more easy to remember,
- turn sentences, dialogues or lessons from the course book I use with students into cartoons or similar fun stories, to motivate my students to spend more time learning.

I'm looking for different tools that I can use to prepare the materials for lessons as well as some that I can recommend to my students so that they could create their stories - during lessons in pairs or groups, or individually for homework.

Toondoo

I've chosen a topic I discussed with my students today - endangered species in Croatia: the brown bear, and created a very short comic, just to check how it is done.

By SanjaB View this Toon at ToonDoo Create your own Toon

WeeBehave

2011-03-16T22:41:00.004+01:00

WeeBehave makes it possible for a parent or a teacher to add children to the account and create a list of “to do“ tasks for every child.

The motto of WeeBehave says: “Manage. Motivate. Measure“, and WeeBehave does exactly that:

• you can put all the tasks you assign to your own children or students on the lists with their names,
• you can let children suggest some tasks or chores they volunteer to do or they think they should do, and so you motivate them even more to do a better job completing them
• children feel motivated to complete all the tasks, knowing they are on the list and to be checked at the end of a lesson or a day
• you can ask children to help you decide if the tasks have been done well enough to gain a green point (completely), a yellow point (only a part) or are still in red (not done)
• you can easily compare the amount of work every child does, and the progress over time of every child by comparing a child's work on different days of the week, or even see the previous week and plan next with the same or different tasks.

I showed the site to my children and they were motivated both to help me create the lists for them and to give me arguments for a more precise assessment.

This is what my younger son's list looked like when we first tried the site:

I think the tool can be very well used in small groups of students, for children's behaviour at school as well as for tracking progress with the foreign language they learn.
I plan to give it a try with a group of fifteen students to see if I can motivate them better this way and make them more aware of all they do and more responsible for their own success.

Max My Dream

2011-02-27T20:41:00.007+01:00

Social neworks are beatiful places where teachers can learn on Sunday evening: Arjana Blazic and Eva Büyüksimkeşyan shared a very interesting post from "Life Feast", a very interesting blog by Ana Maria Menezes, about a writing tool - Max My Dream

In Max My Dream you write your dream in 140 characters and wait for a few seconds. Then you can watch your dream animated, you can send it to a friend with a short note inviting your friend to send you a dream, too, or you can share it on facebook or twitter.

I couldn't resist. This is my dream:

In her blog post Ana Maria suggests some ideas for the use of the tool with students.
I'm going to share this dream with my students on our class blog, because this dream incudes them and my dreams about their future work. I'll have them guess my original words. I'll also invite them to choose a topic we discussed in class to express their opinion, their dream, about it.
I can't wait to see what they are going to post.

2011-02-23T21:44:00.004+01:00

Only a Game – Lessons in Safer Internet for Children

2011-02-20T22:47:00.003+01:00

I started a series of lessons with my sixth graders with the aim of teaching them to feel more comfortable using the Internet and preparing a short drama piece to present as our class contribution to the annual celebrations of our School Day in May.

I found this new activity for teachers on Childnet page and wrote to the authors to get the complete script because it looked just the right kind of material for my 12 – year – old girls and boys. I got it and started immediately working on it with my students.

The scene is very simple: two desks with computers and one big screen in the background. The main characters are two students who live in very different families and go to the same school.
Alex envies Jay because Jay has his new computer in his bedroom and can play whatever games he wants whenever he wants. Alex's parents are strict, his computer is in the front room and the parents decide when and how long he plays on it.
Jay's older friend Taylor persuades him to start playing a new “cool“ game pretending to be fourteen years old and he is soon in trouble when he realizes he has to disclose his personal information to claim the prize and various pop-up messages keep appearing on his screen. He is also in trouble at school because he didn't do some homework that he forgot about because of the game.

The drama comes with three lesson plans and I have already had two lessons with my students.
• In the first lesson we talked about their experience of using the Internet at school and at home, named their favorite games. It was very exciting to see how all students, even the weaker ones, wanted to share their thoughts and experience. Then we read the script and discussed what we learned from Jay's experience.
• The script is in English, it's a foreign language for my students and they'll need some time to learn their lines, but they are so excited they all applied for different roles of real or virtual characters.
Now we are at scene three when Jay starts playing the new “cool“game pretending to be older. Here we have to create our own setting, our own virtual characters that will appear on the stage, their appearance, costumes, background sounds of the game, too. The students are so excited I had to allow some more time for all group ideas to be presented and we'll decide next week on our scene, and, I hope, proceed to the following scenes.
• I hope everything will go smoothly, with only the learning of the language and proper pronunciation until the last scene. There isn't much text and the students understood and discussed it already.
Then in the last scene we have to create our own advice for Jay. I plan to use Childnet SMART rules again. My students are already familiar with the rules: S – safe, M – meet, A – accept, R – reliable, T – tell. I plan to use the Kidsmart presentation and remind them of the rules, have them work in pairs on every detail of Jay's problem and then present their advice to the group. Then we'll agree on all the individual sentences of our advice that go into our script. I also hope to have time to get students to write all the pieces of advice on big posters to keep on the walls.

• The final scene of the play is to be a rap song, possibly with dance. I'll leave it to the imagination of my students and correct only the language.

I'm very excited and can't wait to put our drama on stage. I've been even happier since a few parents reported having talked about the topic with their children because the child was very excited about our work at school and wanted to share the details with parents. It looks like it's going to be a success.

Creating avatar icons

2011-02-07T00:11:00.005+01:00

I've started preparing for a collaborative project on a wiki my students are sharing with a class from Armenia. Parent permission forms are ready and I hope I'll have them back and all signed before the end of the week.

In the meantime I'll invite the students to join the wiki. When they join, they'll need pictures to represent them when they post. My students are only 14, so I thought of an activity 0 for them: creating avatar icons instead of personal photos.
I've just written a post on their blog sharing one idea on how to do it and inviting them to share if they know of a better, easier of more interesting way of doing it.

I've invited them to visit http://avatars.yahoo.com/ and choose a shape they like or think reflects their interests, or maybe even looks like them in a way.
When they create an avatar picture, they can right click it and save it.
For example:

To get a small picture of the avatar face, to use as an icon, for example when they are writing comments,I suggested resizing it: http://www.sherv.net/icon-maker/ It is easy, you just upload the picture, choose the part you like and save it again.

I've given them an example of what they can do with the picture:

I hope this will help my students create their avatar photos in no time and have fun.

Creating a 3D Pop-up Book

2011-01-30T17:26:00.004+01:00

ZooBurst ( http://www.zooburst.com/ ) is a digital storytelling tool which lets you create a 3Dpop-up book.

The creation of the story is very simple and there is an option of a free account. Here is my first attempt:

To get started, you just click "New Book" and then "Build" button, choose the title for your story, find the right images by typing some key words and getting the images from the ZooBurst gallery, or you can upload your own images. Then you add text bubbles to your characters, which appear as exclamation marks until you click on them to read them. You can change the background colours. You can create more pages. When you have told your story, you save it.

Pro account gives you some more attractive options, like adding sound to your stories, but you can create great stories with a free account, too.

There are two things I liked about ZooBurst:

you can easily embed your story
Instead of just enjoying the book by reading it and looking at the illustrations, your readers can choose Webcam mode to experience your book in Augmented Reality: the button turns on your webcam and you see yourself as if in a mirror, with a part of the story you were reading when you turned it on. You can print the mixed reality scene, too.

ZooBurst seems like a tool my students would love. I'll definitely use it in the classroom.

TESOL EVO 2011 - Digital Storytelling

2011-01-09T20:04:00.002+01:00

It's EVO time again, my favourite time when it comes to professional development. The first task of the session on digital storytelling is introductions.

So far I've seen great introductions, and all made with the use of different tools: Prezi, Mixbook, Storybird, Animoto, Flickr photostream, Message Hop, capzles, Bloombla...

I've decided to create an animoto video about my life. I've uploaded my own photos from my computer and chosen music from the audio files offered by animoto.

Animoto is really easy to use and a video can be created in a very short time. I specially like
the possibility Animoto team gives to teachers to apply for Animoto Edu account, which makes it possible for teachers to create full length videos for free.

Teachers only live twice

2010-11-19T22:53:00.001+01:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Teachers only live twice

View more presentations from Sanja Bozinovic.

Learning Technologies for the Classroom

2010-10-03T00:09:00.009+02:00

Wordle - Us at the start

Being a Teacher in the 21st Century – Can Technology Help?

2010-05-31T18:03:00.001+02:00

My reflections after the online courses I participated in during the school year 2009/2010

(TESOL courses: Webheads, Images4Education, TLVW10, Internet4YoungLearners;
AVALON TT Course in SL)

Technology helps in all aspects of a teacher’s professional life:
- Professional Development
- Teaching

Professional Development:
1. getting up-to-date information
2. communication in real time with colleagues all over the world :
• membership in email based groups and lists
• social networking (Facebook, Twitter, Ning)
• COPs
• synchronous online environments (TappedIn, YM, Skype, etc)
• learning through collaboration (wikis, blogs,etc)
• possibility of attending conferences online ( e.g.TESOL, IATEFL)

In the classroom
• motivated students
• students more autonomous in learning
• peer teaching and collaborative learning
• collaboration with other schools
• availability of reference material
• etc.

Lesson Materials
• already available on recommended sites for teachers

some examples:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/
onestopenglish.com
theteacherscorner.net
edutopia.org
oup.com
macmillan.com
puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com
grammarmancomic.com
quizlet.com
teflclips.com

• other educators’ blogs, wikis, webpages, social networks

some examples:
http://quickshout.blogspot.com
http://daily-english-activities.blogspot.com
http://blog-efl.blogspot.com
http://www.digitalplay.info/blog/
http://collablogatorium.blogspot.com/
etc

• teacher-created and student-created materials using online tools
-always choose free tools

Tools for use with students that I have tried and can recommend:
• blogs - examples: my students’blogs (school year 2009/2010)
http://weplayandlearnenglish.blogspot.com/
http://onedayinthelife-croatia.blogspot.com/

• social networking and international projects – my students took part in:
http://www.icgibellina.it/
http://media.iearn.org/

• writing your own lessons and exercises

http://www.kn.pacbell.com/
http://www.lessonwriter.com/

• story telling and comic creators
Toonlet: http://toonlet.com
Mixbook: http://www.mixbook.com/
Storybird: http://storybird.com/
etc

• voice tools and videos
Podomatic: http://www.podomatic.com/
VoiceThread: http://www.voicethread.com/
Voxopop: http://www.voxopop.com/
Animoto: http://www.animoto.com/
etc

• posters and fun
http://www.wallwisher.com/
http://www.xtranormal.com/
http://www.glogster.com/
etc

A colleague teacher Vance Stevens, paraphrasing Woody Allen on relationships, said in one lecture:
“Teachers are like sharks -
If they don’t keep moving forward, they die.”

Is that true and what is the added value of lessons with technology? Should teachers reconsider their role and let technology into the classroom?

AVALON

2010-05-24T23:44:00.004+02:00

Two events in SL this week:
1 AVALON Learning Event: How to teach a language in SL:

2 AVALON party - a beautiful informal gathering with dancing, a teleport to Michael Jackson Island to get free MJ fedoras and do synchronised Thriller dance. A lot of fun on Sunday evening with great people from the AVALON Teacher Training Course.

Animoto

2010-05-08T23:37:00.008+02:00

Animoto is a very interesting and easy to use tool which helps you organize your photos to make an interesting video. You can choose to insert some text, too. That can be useful if you need some explaining or if you create it as a language task.

Animoto is extremely easy to use. The first step is uploading photos and arranging them in the order you want to see them. The second step is choosing music to accompany the slides. What I like is the possibility to choose from a list with a number of different genres. If you prefer to upload from your computer, there is a reminder that you need to have right to use a piece of music, which is very useful because students sometimes forget about copyright. The final step is to decide on the title, description, how long you want to see each photo for and that's it. In fact, all the work is done for you - you just wait and see in a few minutes how your photos change shapes and are beautifully synchronised with music.

The only little detail that annoyed me for some time was the limit to a 30- second video if you have a free acount and then I learned how to solve the problem. I applied for Animoto Edu - Animoto for educators, where you can get full length videos for free. It's so much easier to express yourself when the time limit is not 30 seconds.

I showed my students what I had done with the photos of one of our lessons - a walk around our school to celebrate Earth Day. That day we all took photos of beautiful spring scenes around our school with the task to write or record comments in English.

My students loved the video, or so they told me. Next I wanted them to comment and to try and make their own.
I'm still waiting for some written comments in English but today I've seen the first Animoto made by one of the students:
Josip's Earth Day Animoto
It really made me happy.

TESOL EVO 2010 - Internet 4 Young Learners (Part 1)

2010-02-01T23:43:00.003+01:00

The work of the group is organized in a YG. Through the YG the participants have access to the group's wiki, where we can find the tasks for every week and other useful info, and the participants also write on the group's whiteboard and check messages in Grouply.
The focus is on exchanging opinions on the use of oline activities with young learners. Participants have so far defined the term YLs, expressed their opinions on ESL vs. EFL, compared the use of the internet and modern technologies in general in various countries and schools, compared some EFL websites and some favourite kids' websites...
There is an interesting list of Readings for every week.
An interesting discussion during Week 3: making the list of useful tips while selecting online activities for young learners.
I'm looking forward to Week 4: a meeting in TI and a discussion on email communication projects. I have already joined ePals (http://www.epals.com/) with a group of my students.

TESOL EVO 2010 - Becoming a Webhead (Part 1)

2010-02-01T23:25:00.006+01:00

The first three weeks of this year's TESOL EVO sessions are over. What I like is that "Alice in Wonderland" feeling is fading and I see where I am going and feel much more confident than last year. Together with the wonderful feeling of being a part of a great community of teachers where people share and collaborate, learn from and teach other members, the feeling is great and I am looking forward to the next three weeks.
What have I learned?
Becoming a Webhead
Week 1

Augmented Reality Language Learning

2009-06-19T00:53:00.002+02:00

Today I've attended a very interesting presentation and discussion about augmented reality and language learning. Dennis Newson kindly invited all members of Osnagroup in VWLL and Webheads to his villa at EduNation in Second Life. The presentation was given by Howard Vickers/Howie Yoshikawa, who already blogged about his ideas: http://www.avatarlanguages.com/blog/arll/, which I found very interesting.
There was a group of very interesting people at Dennis's villa, Howie's presentation was thought-provoking, I was glad I decided to attend and I am going to write about it tomorrow. It's too late now.

Time Machine Lesson

2009-06-08T22:46:00.003+02:00

I've just read about a beautiful idea for a lesson plan. It's a lesson in writing and it could be done with students on different levels of English, excellent for teenagers, but also for adults.

Seth Dickens had this idea for the last class ever with his students. He asked them to send him a "Time Machine" email that they will be able to read only in five years' time. He'd set a blog for them for that purpose.

He asked them to reflect on the past years in high school, to write about what they thought they would be doing in five years' time, what they thought their classmates would be doing and to leave a message for the whole class to read in five years time.
He added his students' emails to the blog's Email Notifications service and posted the students' emails. He scheduled their post to appear in exactly five years.

I think the idea is brilliant and only have to check how to make posts appear at a certain point in the future,not immediately.

Seth also mentioned http://www.futureme.org/ , which does the same but for individual users. You can write a letter to your future self and schedule it to get to your email on a date in the future. It looks like fun. I've decided to try a version of Time Machine lesson with my students. This last week of the school year looks like the right time for this kind of activity. Thanks Seth!

Joining Facebook

2009-05-24T23:04:00.004+02:00

The Pope is on Facebook, HUPE, Croatian Association of Teachers of English, is on Facebook. I should be,too. I've joined and can't wait to see the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook when compared to what I get from Ning, Twiter, Second Life.

Professional development: online conferences vs. f2f conferences

2009-05-24T23:03:00.000+02:00

SLanguages 2009

2009-05-09T23:29:00.004+02:00

Carol's session about building audio posters

Gavin's closing session

Nergiz, Graham and Nick had a presentation about VWLL2009

Visiting Zagreb in SL

2009-05-04T00:14:00.003+02:00

I have been thinking a lot about starting to teach in SL.
Last week I talked to Gerhilde from talkademy about a possibility of starting a course of Croatian language in SL. Although I have never tried teaching Croatian, I must admit that it sounds tempting. While talking about it, Gerhilde and I visited Zagreb in SL, walked through the center and talked about how it could be used to add attractive content to the course.
Today I've visited Zagreb in SL again. What a funny feeling it is to think of how to create lessons in the streets that I walk every day on the way to my RL school.

More on holodecks

2009-05-01T00:15:00.005+02:00

Dennis shared some new big scenes in the box with the members of Osnagroup. All scenes were built by Carol, who came to the meeting too and explained again about changing the script.
I was impressed from the very beginning and the first scene, because these scenes were so much bigger and more complex than the rug and cushions from the last session.

Teaching in SL has big potential in this. If I could only drag a box in RL, build a scene and walk into it with my students, and simply take it back in a second after the lesson.

Worldbridges webcasting and plans for WiAOC09

2009-04-26T21:53:00.002+02:00

Vance Stevens, the webhead who created the webheads' social network on Ning for WiAOC, toghether with webcasters Jose Rodriguez and Doug Symington, organized a meeting at http://webheadsinaction.org/chat. (Worldbridges chat room). Some people joined in Skype. A lot of people participated and there were some good ideas, too.

I liked Gwen's idea to include a Pecha Kucha event. That's a kind of event in which a number of people give power point presentations one after another. Their presentations are special because they can have only 20 slides and can last only 6 min 40 sec. That way presentations cannot be too long or monotonous, sometimes they can even be funny, because presenters need to be very well prepared in order to manage to say all they want in their 6 min 40 sec.

I managed to listen to most of the session. I had to leave from time to time and I couldn't participate in voice because my home was full of very loud 10-year olds - celebrating my son's birthday.

Animoto

2009-04-26T00:03:00.003+02:00

Ronaldo, a webhead from Brasil, had a very interesting idea for his students' blog. He asked his students what makes Brasil a unique country. They had to answer with one word or phrase and two - three photos. He used the text and the photos to make an animoto video. It looks really great.
Other webheads loved it, too, and a few would like to do the same activity with their student about their countries.
I'd loved to make a similar short animoto about Croatia. I immediately searched in my pictures and found a few very nice photos of Croatia,I uploaded them in Flickr, and signed in animoto.

My photos will be my contribution. I'll ask my students to send me some more and their answers. We'll have to choose some Croatian music, too.
I'm looking forward to seeing Croatia and other webheads' countries in a collaborative space. That will be special.

Second Life

2009-04-25T23:08:00.006+02:00

Every Friday the members of SLexperiments group in SL meet to share new ideas, lesson plans, show some new tools they have discovered or just to chat with friends and have a good time.

Yesterday Daffodil showed some of her new ideas for her lesson on Monday and we tried them to see how they worked.
As usual, Daffodil made a good job and produced some very interesting activities for her students. I especially liked the vocabulary exercise in which she produced boxes from the inventory, the boxes had phrases the students had to match them with various cattegories.
The best part was when she made the activity fun by making the boxes physical and allowing students to kick and move them into the fields with the names of the cattegories.
I wish I could design a similar acitity in RL, not to mention what fun it would be to drag it from an inventory whenever I want and be sure it works.
Teaching in SL gives so many more opportunities for relaxed learning where students can change the place where they learn and not be in the classroom all the time, or they can move, chat and learn much more through doing.

Later, Daffodil and Carol taught Osna, Dorka and me how to create a scene that can be used for teaching. We tried a simple one consisting of a rug and two cushions.

I was very proud of myself when I managed to change the script, record the position of the objects and put my lovely scene into my lovely pink box and then the box into the inventory. I took it out of the inventory without a problem.
That means that you can build any scene you need for your lesson, add any objects you need, and you can produce it in a second from the inventory any time you need. That's wonderful.

Later at night there was a very interesting meeting at Dennis's villa - Osnagroup extra meeting. Unfortunately, Iffaf had to postpone her lecture because of some technical problems Dennis had yesterday, but we had a very interesting conversation. Dennis, Iffaf, Carol and me were present, and Nahir and Mary joined later.
I learned a lot about the differences between virtual worlds like SL, Twinity, Reaction Grid, Wonderland, Metaverse, etc. A few months ago I didn't even know any of these existed. Now I'm learning why different teachers and teacher trainers prefer one over the others.

Earth Day - part two

2009-04-22T23:27:00.005+02:00

Earth Day has been a busy day for me. A lot of excitement. I managed to organize two events for my students.

I joined the Learntrends online conversation with a small group of students. I was excited and happy to show to my students how to communicate in Elluminate, I wanted them to meet other people from all over the world on this special day and I wanted them to meet the Webheads, too. The Webheads in Action group is the group that I am very proud to be a member of.
This joining the conversation in Elluminate did not go withouot problems. A few of the computers at school didn't work as we wanted and students kept loosing connection, had to log out and in again. Fortunately, I had my laptop and brougth an additional school laptop and we had headsets that worked on them, all other computers had speakers only.
Eager to participate, we decided to use voice right away even if it wasn't time yet for our Webheads Earthcasts. The voice worked too well, but with an echo (from other computers' speakers). I managed to say hello and who we were. We continued listening, agreeing how to mute other computers when in a quarter of an hour we start communicating in voice with other Webheads and their students.
My students were excited to see that there were people there from Australia, Taiwan, Pakistan, the USA, Portugal,...they were happy to chat in text, but I wanted them to use voice,too. Unfortunately, every time we tried to join in voice, our microphone wasn't working. People couldn't hear us. We were a bit sad, kept trying till we had to leave because it was time for other classes.
When I later talked to the students about the event, I found out that although they were unable to use voice, they were very excited to have been a part of the such a nice international event and hoped I'd organize more similar sessions for them in the future.
Two hours later another group of students, mostly those interested in American Studies, but also a few who wanted to learn more about green projects, joined me at the American Corner of the Public Library B. Ogrizović, where The Embassy of the USA organized a very interesting digital video conference with a professor in Pennsylvania, us in Zagreb and the third group - students from Zadar, Croatia. Prof. Pallant from Allegheny College, Pennsylvania, talked to students about green architecture. I had thought that was an interesting topic, but what I learned and saw in that presentation exceeded my expectations. I must admit that I had no idea many of the mentioned possibilities existed. I had never even thought about different uses for the roof of the building, different possibilities of heating, to mention only some. Fascinating. The language prof. Pallant used was easy to follow and the students enjoyed. I was very happy that I brought them. Of course, as always, I was thankful to the people from the Library and the Embassy who organized the event so well.

Earth Day 2009

2009-04-21T21:58:00.004+02:00

Tomorrow is Earth Day. I've prepared two activities for my EFL students.
The first activity is participating in a project of a 24-hour online conversation (http://bit.ly/WPKGi ). I will join with a small group of students at about 12.30 and I hope, if everything goes well, to find Vance Stevens and some of his students in Elluminate. We can stay for half an hour and then both me and my students have other classes.

I have one class and then I can join Marina Lončar and the organizers from The Embassy of the USA in Zagreb at the American Corner for a DVC with an Earth Day topic for discussion: Green Architecture. I'll take a grop of students who regularly take my American Studies classes and a few more interested either in new technologies or in green projects. The speaker will be prof. dr Eric Palant from Allegheny College, Pennsylvania. I hope students will be active and ask questions because this seems like a very interesting topic.

We are really fortunate to have the library with American Corner where all sorts of interesting activities take place in the neighbourhood. After the conference I have two more classes at my school - with my students of Italian as a foreign language. We can learn some basic facts about Earth Day in Italian. I hope they'll remember we agreed to wear green T-shirts tomorrow.

Teaching and blogging about teaching

2009-04-01T21:33:00.003+02:00

What role does blogging about teaching have in a teacher's professional development? Can blogging help a teacher teach better? Is it one of the activities that all teachers should start doing regularly as a part of their job? What should and EFL teacher blog about?
I'll try to find answers to these questions in this blog - learning by doing.