Pronunciation Insett: web resources

Here are some of the web resources for teaching & learning pronciation referred to in the Pronunciaiton insett on December 10th. Please add in the comments section and I'll incorporate them into the post. Thanks.

Howjsay Simple. Write the word in the box and listen to it being said.

Ship or sheep

Iowa university phonetics detailed diagrams and videos of mouth.

Stress Monsters the most popular of English File's pronunciation pages

English Central good fun for learners. Students listen video clips and mimic what they hear. The programme allows for students to record themselves, for which they get a score! You have to sign up but it's very straightforward.

Accent Archive compare English-speakers from different places.

Getting students to use Spanish when they're working on online tasks

This is one I've been knocking my head against ever since I got interested in using ICT in my classes. The students get so engaged in what they're doing that they automatically switch back to their first language - and you as the teacher end up sounding like a record stuck in the same groove; reminding them to talk in English.

Here's an idea that I've tried out recently and which seems to have had positive results: get them to talk in Spanish.

Set a time limit of, say, 15 minutes and tell them to get on with the task and talk in Spanish, but to note down the phrases they use while they're working.

At the end of the 15 minutes get them to take turns writing their phrases on the IWB and getting other students to help them translate them into English. In this way they build up a really great bank of useful English which they can draw from.

I follow this up with a flipchart meter which I constantly update while students are working on the computers so that they're aware that I'm listening to and taking account of what they're saying.

If you want to do more work on computer vocabulary here's a site which provides basic vocabulary with images and quizzes.

Have fun!

Making online comics

Here's a very teacher and student friendly site for making online comics with suggestions of how you can exploit them in class.

The inimitable Ken Robinson on changing education paradigms

Food for thought!

Writing is fun (specially when help is provided)

Writingfun is the name of a website that provides a range of interactive templates of common written forms e.g. reports, reviews, articles. Each writing genre comes with examples that students can use as models and show a range from low to quite high levels.

Here's a tutorial from Russel Stannard that runs through the site's features.

For more really helpful tutorials by the same guy here's his site TeacherTrainingVideos.

Top tips for creating flipcharts

Some simple easy ideas - plus a video showing how to implement them - for creating attractive flipcharts from José Picardo's Box of Tricks. Enjoy!

The top 10 learning tools

Here's a great list of web tools for you and your students to use. Worth a look!

tumblr

Yo! The word on the virtual street is that tumblr.com is the new Blogger, Twitter Wiki and Facebook all in one. Just opened a personal account to check it out and it seems very user-friendly. It's like a blog but with multiple pages like a wiki but you follow and are followed like Twitter and see your friends' updates like FB and can retweet them like the aforementioned. Not sure if it would be used collaboratively like a wiki/blog or get students to open one each...

ActivInspire - using a personal profile to save your settings on IWBs

Did you know that you create a personal profile with your favourite settings? This means that when you open up ActivInspire it will always show the same set of tools, the background colour of pages etc that you have decided on.

• With ActivInspire open (in the staffroom or classroom, it doesn't matter which), select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles...

 

•  Now you can set your flipchart page colour

 

• Choose what tools appear on the toolbar

 

• And decide how many colours appear in your palette

• You can also make sure that ActivInspires shared resources - images, sounds, backgrounds etc - load and are available for you to use (on some computers in the staffroom they haven't been loading)

• To do this, click on settings and uncheck Use default 'Shared Resources' path
• Click on .... next to Shared resources file

• And this window will open. On My Computer find the T:drive > Materials > ActivInspire Resources

• Now click on the little disk with the pencil (top right-hand corner) to save your profile

 

• Save it wherever you want to on your computer (perhaps the T.drive is best then it will be accessable from both staffroom and classroom)

 

• Now when you click on Shared Resources in the Resource Browser (if you can't see this on the right of your flipchart, select View > Browsers), all the resources should be available for you to use.

 

• If you need to load your profile in a classroom. Again, select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles and click on the folder symbol (top right-hand corner) and find it on your computer where you saved it.

Ideas for creating simple flipcharts

Good tips and ideas, with little prearation time, for ceating effecting flip charts.

The present and future of Personal Learning Environments

That was the title of a talk the Josh Underwood and me gave for as our recent Talks for teachers.

PLEs relate very closely to the idea of Learner Autonomy. As you can see from this video.




Graham Attwell (one of the people responsible for this video) has described a PLE in the following terms:
" the environment in which we learn. And that includes work, the home, our social environment and the institutional learning programmes in which we participate. It includes books and above all perhaps it includes people… It recognises the primacy of the learner on driving and developing their learning. And – in terms of tools – it provides them the means to organise their own learning… Personal Learning Networks, Personal Learning Environments – I don’t really mind what we call them. What is critical is that a PLE / PLN helps us in organising our learning and helps us make the connections with those with whom we want to collaborate and share, whoever, wherever they are."(See his blog for the full post.)

If you start to think about your current PLE you're well on the way to seeing how you can develop it. A good way to start is to draw up a mind map. Here's mine for example.

Then you can consider the resources that you find most useful and productive. For example, I like:

• the TeachingEnglish facebook page for it's lively discussions and teaching tips
• twitter where you can do searches e.g. #elt, #tesol,#iatefl and find other teachers' handy tips, links etc.
• Symbaloo which is useful for keeping links to all your own – or your classes - most useful web resources in one place

Josh suggested a series of language utilities:

• wordnik which gives the meaning of words with examples of their use in context plus links to them
• wordia which includes videos that people upload to illustrate a word
• and in general tools that support learning activities for example this blog that he developed with students for their science experiments which used a combination of blogger and google docs

You can see the details of our talk plus a fuller lists of resources to help you and your students develop your PLEs on this google doc.

Getting students to stick to English during the lesson

We talked about this problem in the INSETT on integrating ICT into project work, so I thought you like to see what Herbert Puchta has to say on the issue. Anybody got any more tips that you can offer us?

Web tools for vocabulary building and help with pronunciation

There's now a whole series of online resources to help students to build up their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation. There's no end of the ways you can use them. I'll suggest a few but I'm sure you can come up with more. Why not add them as comments or in a new post?

So here goes:
lingro - thanks to Andrew M for finding this one. If you paste the URL (address) of a website into it, it will load the page and make all the words clickable. When you click on a word, it offers you the definition of it or a translation into the language you select. Many words also come with a sound file so that you can hear the way they are pronounced.

If you register (which is immediate) you can save your own word lists and play games with them to help you remember them. I've got my students, who are currently working on projects, to learn 10 new words related to their project topic per week using lingro as part of their homework.

Seeing is believing - so check it out!

wordnik - type in a word and it not only gives you  a series of definitions but shows you how it has been used in context - offering you links to the sources plus examples of how it is currently being used on twitter! You can also click on"Pronunciations" to see how the word breaks down phonetically and to hear it being said.

forvo - type in a word to hear it pronounced by different people from all over the world. If you register with the site you can also request for people to upload the pronunciation of the word you want.

wordia - this is a site where people upload videos to illustrate a word (have a look at "filch"  for a good example).

wordreference - a good place to quickly translate a word into a range of languages.

INSETT: Integrating ICT into project work

Some useful web tools:
Voki – great fun for creating animated characters that speak: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

VoiceThread – for creating online presentations: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

Animoto – for creating slick videos from photos, videos and text: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post in combination with Podomatic.

Podomatic – for creating podcasts: video tutorial

Glogster – for creating animated, online posters: 90 second video tutorial

A Primary 3 student's Glogster poster 
 


EnglishCentral a great resource to help students to improve their speaking skills and confidence in them. The site contains a huge range of videos you can choose from and uses voice recognition. Students record themselves imitating what they hear (in small chunks) and are given a score. You can set up an account as a teacher and even set your students homework and check how they've done.

Who to talk to for project tips:
Guy has used EnglishCentral in conjunction with a very interesting ongoing radio project he has with one of his classes - so for more ideas talk to him!

Rebbecca has some really good ideas for using PowerPoint with students - so if you're thinking of using this as the end product for your students' projects talk to her!

Sonia worked last year on a successful magazine project with students and also has come up with a really cool idea for keeping students talking in English during class. She allocates each of her students a "persona" who lives in a different English-speaking countries and then gets them to flesh them out. Her students have even ended up creating relations between themselves and all she needs to do when they revert to Spanish is to say "Remember who you are!"

Andy worked on a Reality Show project with her Senior 4 class - see the girls' contribution on her class wiki. Sounds like a great project idea for either now or for Summer intensive course so get the details from her!

Linking with students from other countries
If you want to link up with other teachers and students across the world try elanguages. You can either join in on an existing project or start your own and get other schools to join in with yours. You have to register first.

More resources to download
Ideas and resources for web projects .pdf 
Web tools for teachers .pdf

More links from Jon Brown

• http://dictionary.reference.com/ compilation of word games to improve vocabulary and spelling. Good for higher level students B2+ and from 14+
• http://www.carnegielibrary.org/kids/storymaker/storymaker.swf nice software for creating stories either individually or in a whole class session. Primary 3 – 5
• http://www.listenaminute.com/index.html some good listening material with useful quizzes that students can either do iindividually or in a whole class session. B1+ from 11+