English Central Videos

http://www.englishcentral.com/videos

Many thanks to Dorota for flagging this one up. It's a (primarily) US site but don't let the accents put you off using the videos as the resources themselves make up for that (to us UK English people)  in spades! There is, in fact, a 'see Britain' section where a number of the voices have British English accents (e.g. http://www.englishcentral.com/video/16402/freedom-of-speech).

As this screenshot shows you have a video (choice of thousands) which is labelled by approximate level. You watch and listen and can click on any word as you go for a definition. There are then 'learn', 'speak' and 'quiz' sections on each as follow up. Each one is a lesson in itself and could be used whole group or individually if chosen carefully by the teacher. There's a mobile version and a history of videos watched which would be useful for students who want to track their progress. The premium version gives you unlimited access and allows for course and class creation and management. I wasn't able to see what the limits were on the free account but Dorota says she has been using for a while with no issues. 

For teachers there are some case studies of how it can be used like this one 

assessment without paper : vocaroo mp3

listen to ‘assessment without paper : vocaroo mp3’ on audioBoom

assessment without paper:using audioboom

listen to ‘assessment without paper:using audioboom’ on audioBoom

will teachers be replaced by technology?

Trucano (2015, online) addresses this fear head on. Using historical, research and experiential justifications he draws the following conclusions with which I wholeheartedly concur: 

"Introducing new technologies will not replace teachers.
Experience from around the world shows us that, over time, teachers' roles become more central -- and not peripheral -- as a result of the introduction of new technologies.
Introducing new technologies will, however, replace some of the things that teachers do -- and require that teachers take on new, often times more sophisticated, duties and responsibilities.

That said, teachers who don't use technology will be replaced by teachers who do" (my italics)

That fear is perhaps justified when compounded by the evident glee with which performative and audit driven tech based systems are introduced in some areas of education but it is the application and use of technology in effective ways to support teaching and learning that needs to be embraced. Distinctions need to be made by properly trained teachers between monitoring tools and teaching/ learning tools as a first step towards undermining ongoing resistance. 


Trucano, M. (2015) Will technology replace teachers? No, but ... [online]. Available at: <http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/tech-and-teachers>  

That said, teachers who don't use technology will be replaced by teachers who do."

super action hero comic maker

and stop frame tool online. Only had a little fiddle but seems simple enough. Perhaps a little limiting but fun and has clear potential

http://www.culturestreet.org.uk/activities/superactioncomicmaker/

Although they are designed for kids the lesson plans might be of interest to some colleagues too. 

http://www.culturestreet.org.uk/teachers/shipwrecks/index.php 

some additional how to vids

How to create a collaborative presentation using Google slides
How to Blendspace



Next level Blendspace- tracking and adding students- increasing interaction

quiz template

audio cnwl

listen to ‘audio cnwl’ on audioBoom

Spreaker

A brilliant podcasting/ broadcasting tool in so many ways. Try it and you'll see why.

Brainybox from classtools example

esafety padlet

Created with Padlet

Passwords

everyone click here

bl session 1 EHWLC OCT 14

listen to ‘bl session 1 EHWLC OCT 14’ on audioBoom

podcast writing?

listen to ‘podcast writing?’ on audioBoom

(free) Audio tools for assessment and feedback

This post has four screencasts on tools you can use to aid the assessment and feedback processes as a teacher. It's about time saving (of course) but more about giving you the opportunity to add depth to your feedback and breadth to your assessment strategies. 


The video below demonstrates how Read and Write for Google app combined with vocaroo.com can not only save loads of marking time (once you get into the swing of it) but it can also add depth and quality to the feedback. 

Access the Chromestore here

Access vocaroo here






Here's another screencast I made on using vocaroo with a little more on sharing options in Vocaroo



Audioboo.fm for assessment




More specifics about how to use Audioboo
 

Chopping youtube vids

Don't get me wrong, I love tubechop. It's such an easy interface and works a treat BUT you can't easily full screen it once chopped. So I had a look around and found http://viewrz.com/cutter . Does the same job AND gives you a full screen button.  You set the time you want it to start and the same for the end time. The rest is pretty intuitive. It has a slightly annoying aspect to it in that when paused it covers the screen with options but it's worth it if you want easy full screen.


Tubechop does have an obvious embed code generator but you can find the viewrz one if you pause the video and click 'share'. I did find it a little hard to copy- took a few attempts. Anyway, here's one I just made

Let's pretend this is going to be...

...a post about the easiest mistake to make when trying to get hold of links for blog posts

watch the video or read the post. Or both

see that link in the address bar above? The number of times people copy that and put it into e -portfolios or e mails is amazing. It is an easy mistake to make but can be really frustrating for the recipient or assessor.

Click publish (or update if you are editing) then 'VIEW'

 the post so that you see the live version online, click on the post title to get the unique URL & then copy that link.

open badges...digging deeper

update 29th Sept 2014

I have nailed my colours to the Credly mast. Long may that remain. Also playing with Moodle badges but for smoothness and ability to issue badges from my phone at a click Credly is winning hands down at the moment

---------------------------------------------------------

The badg.us site has been down since the weekend apparently and it got me rummaging around on the web again and I have found some things that may be of interest if you are thinking of issuing badges next year. The guy that set it up did have some server space trouble around this time last year and what he has done is remarkable but this is a crucial time for us and maybe it's time to look elsewhere...

You may also want to explore the badge options in Moodle as these can be exported too. For the moment I think there is nothing that individual users can do to author them and those that will exist seem to relate to Moodle use. Watch this space though, it may turn out to be the best option. 

https://app.achievery.com is in 'beta' format and there are definitely things that need ironing out- you need two accounts to make and receive badges for a start so I wouldn't recommend this one in its current manifestation- the badge making tool is a bit fiddly too. The badges can look nice and I also like the way the badge could actually act as a lesson plan with evidence requirements built into the issuing page: https://app.achievery.com/earned/4165 

https://www.openbadges.me/ uses the same designer software and for that reason alone I'd say avoid it for now- the simplicity of the badg.us designer tool was what appealed to me in the first place- having said that, I'm sure it'd be OK once you got to grips with it and had made a few badges. You should also note that this is designed to work as a plug in for other systems such as Wordpress. The completed badges can look very nice too: 

https://credly.com is pretty good- is great for built in icons with which to make the badges and is perfect if you want to make nice looking badges that can be issued electronically. As far as I can tell there is no facility for printing them the way I have with badg.us though and if you want to go down that route you'd best avoid it but for straightforward badge making and issuing this is the one for me. Badges can be uploaded to mozilla backpack (aka 'persona' account) easily as you can see from this collection- it's the last badge in the listr: https://backpack.openbadges.org/share/824391a6e3d2c1ac3d7660831042a461/ you can generate a code to issue to people so they can claim for themselves but the code isn't unique 

The best alternative to badg.us for printable that I have found is ForAllBadges: https://badges.forallschools.com/ - it's set up for schools but enables e-issuing and printables in pdf format. Easy upload to Mozilla backpack too. What you might really like about this one (and it's not something you can do yet in badg.us is set upl classes and it also has the facility to enable students to issue the badges to each other if you want (that appears to be a default setting so be careful)

Each student gets her/ his journal and you can set it so that they can see other people's badges in class

codes are unique in the printable pdf

if you have seen the badges I have been using you will know that the 'hard copy' badge collection has been very popular and competitive so I wouldn't want to lose that functionality and to have the classroom profiles element available too seems like a win win...until this site crashes or needs some downtime!

session on curating etc.

Tonight's session : http://tinyurl.com/eteachweek9

also see this post: http://eteachx3.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/curated-newspapers.html

Open Badges

Another Adobe Voice video. This one's on open badges. I made it using the Adobe Voice app on the ipad. I'd like to give the impression that it's really hard to do but it isn't!