Online resources to support student tasks, projects and self-study

There are lots of online resources you can use to support task or project-based work and to encourage student self-study – and you can find out about many of them by thumbing through this blog. So in this post I'm just going to talk about some websites you can use for digital storytelling.

My favourite are:
ZimmerTwins
StoryJumper 
StoryBird

ZimmerTwins

This is a website where you can make attractive, short animated films. It's easy to use and intuitive, students pick it up in minutes and works well for age groups from about 7 – 12.
As with all these types of resources, you need to create an account first (which is free with no strings attached). You can either get your students to login with your account details or create a class login.

Ways to use ZimmerTwins in class
It's great for focussing on vocabulary related to actions, settings and emotions.
I usually make a demo movie to show to my class. In it I introduce the 3 characters that appear in every movie: a boy called Edgar, a girl called Eva and a cat called 13.
I show:

• the different things they can do: fly, hide, laugh, sing, dance etc 
• the different places they can visit: a desert, a jungle, outer space, a Chinese restaurant etc
• the different emotions they experience: angry, sad, scared, surprised etc

Sometimes, I've got students to write out their story beforehand in class or for homework and talk about it in a whole class situation before going to the computer room. You can also set the movie making part for homework. After students have made their movies, have a film premier session where they see what their classmates have done and vote for the movie they like best.

As with all these resources, I ask one of the students to help demonstrate how to use them on the IWB for the rest of the class. This enables you to check for any difficulties they may have in using them (that haven't occurred to you) and also is a good way of introducing important lexis: click there, scroll down a bit, not that one, this one etc. Moreover, you'll probably find that students pay much more attention to a classmate than to you!

Another tip: tell your students that they can work at the computers for the first 10 minutes or so in their first language. However, one of them has to note down the phrases that they say most. Then, stop work and ask them to write their phrases – or a translation of them in English – on the board. This gives them a language bank to work with when their back at the computers and is also a practical way to call their attention to the fact that you want them to work in English. You can back this up by having a barometer diagram displayed on the IWB with students' names at the side. As you go round the class monitoring your students, you can increase or decrease the barometer according to whether they are working in English or not and make it clear to them that this will form part of their speaking evaluation.

StoryJumper

You can use this for creating online picture book stories – here's an example from my Silver 3 class. The site is very teacher friendly and you can create a simple fun login for your whole class. I advise you to play with StoryJumper a bit before launching it on a class but it's quite simple to use and comes with a good tutorial. It will appeal to is the same age-group as for ZimmerTwins, about 7 – 12.

Ways to use StoryJumper in class

I've used this for practising writing descriptions but you can really adapt it for any topic or language focus you want. Again you can start in class and let students finish their stories for homework.

StoryBird

This is similar to StoryJumper but suitable for older students – basically of any age. It has a very helpful tour which will give you and your students an overview of what to do and how the site works. Like StoryBird, you can easily login a whole class and it offers a dashboard where you can check students' progress and give them stickers or even marks on their work. It also encourages collaborative work and students can invite each other to work on a story, so it's ideally suited for work outside the classroom.

Speaking homework

Procedure:

Speaking homework:

· Set up the task in class, eg. Topic from what they have been doing in class, set of new vocab (minimum 5 words), Speak for between 1 and two mins, depends on level) Maybe preteach some pron from the vocab or other predictable words. Only these words can be used, they have to build around them improvising, no sentence writing. They can practise in class peer work, teacher supervising.

· Go home, go into vocaroo.com with a set of headphones, if necessary, depends on PC, and do it and send to teacher

· Teacher listens, while writing feedback, as below and send back to student.


Comments:
This creates more personal and individualized assessment a one-to-one with the teacher.


It gives a more accurate assessment than in class time and it may take up less of the learner’s time than doing an essay, reading or grammar, but may offer more of a feeling of accomplishment in productivity and a change from the usual homework.


The correcting may be less than having to correct written work, but the teacher need to be a computer with headphones.


Example oral below

Oral presentation


Teacher feedback:

Loic,

That was fine.


You used the new vocabulary successfully, in the right context; setting up my own business", "financial backing" etc.

Vocabulary

You said something that sounded like a Spanish expression:

"getting your idea into reality", which would really be "making your dream come true".

Pronunciation

Be careful with pronunciation;

"custom" the "u" is the same sound as in the words; "country", "love", "up"  and culture"

"business" is "bizniz"

Financial backing is the the same as the "a" in cat

Discourse

You made good used of discourse; "once I've finished ..."

You used "so" and "and" and there were hardly any pauses, just the necessary ones for the "chunks" of information.

Good work! B
_____________
from Any Barker – thanks, Andy!

Great tool to help you manage your classes

Want to avoid, classroom management problems? Fancy a tool that you display on the screen with the names of all your students with a fun avatar?

That you can use to reward your students when they participate, are creative and do hard work - 

as well as to point out the times when they’re being disruptive?

If so, check out Classdojo

Passive learning on the IWB

Does the maximisation of the IWB have a positive influence on teaching?  Walker-Tileston (2004) argues that children learn best through their dominant senses, seeing, hearing and touching.  Interactive classrooms can appeal to all three senses simultaneously through a variety of visual representations, sounds and the capacity to touch and interact with the board.  Therefore, I carried out a short experiment to see whether my Jnr3 students retained and remembered vocabulary and grammar structures better through memory games on the IWB.  The experiment was carried out for a period of 6 weeks on units 11-13 of English in Mind on 12 students.  Memory games were used on the IWB for the vocabulary in units 11 and 13 and for the grammar in unit 12.  The resources used were: Pelmanism on the IWB, Quizzlet.com and the English in Mind DVD.  At the end of each unit, students had to complete a unit check on the target language covered.  The results obtained demonstrated that in both vocabulary and grammar exercises, students’ average marks were higher when only the coursebook had been used.  However, marks were generally higher for vocabulary exercises (average 75%) than grammar (average 68%).  To complete the experiment students were asked to fill in a questionnaire at the end to reflect on the sample lessons.  The results were quite contradictory.  Their responses revealed that students unanimously preferred doing exercises on the IWB and preferred vocabulary exercises in general.  However, 73% felt they had learnt more doing exercises in the coursebook and 64% felt that they had learnt more from grammar exercises.  91% found exercises more interesting on the IWB and found exercises more difficult in the coursebook.  Ironically, when asked to choose which exercises they had learnt the most from this year, they all chose exercises from the coursebook (50% chose Check your progress and 50% chose Read and listen).  With regards to general feedback, 55% would like more exercises on the IWB or in the computer room, especially relating to grammar, 36% would like less homework and 9% would like more exercises relating to vocabulary. 

It is clear from the results that students enjoy working with the IWB, but they also seem to have a preference for what is easier, which did equate to better acquisition when learning vocabulary in general.  Even though the lessons included an element of interactivity, the fact that I was teaching old things in new ways resulted in passive learning, thus students only remember a meagre amount of the target language taught.  I believe that the uniqueness of IWB technology lies in the possibility for an intersection between technical and pedagogic interactivity.  Transforming teaching and learning with technology is a function of pairing thoughtful product design with current research in order to support instructional assessment practices that work.  Unfortunately, I speak the language of technology with a pronounced accent.  To eliminate passive learning and engage the digital era students when using the IWB it is essential that new content be taught in new ways.


(posted on behalf of Flor)