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?
Showing posts with label learningtechnologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learningtechnologies. Show all posts
January 27, 2012
January 26, 2012
Playing in the virtual sandbox
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.
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.
January 17, 2012
Let Me Introduce Myself - Ms Blogathon Newbie
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.
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.
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