Sunday, February 21, 2010
..that is: I’m ready to test Moodle in up to three of my classes. I’ve taken down my personal website and installed Moodle 1.9.x (weekly whatever) on it.
So far I’ve already started a course for the book I’m reading in an English class. Two history courses (on industrialisation and the First World War) will be [...]
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Over at his blog, Sean Banville tips his hat to several teaching colleagues who, despite their full time jobs, create free English lesson plans for us.
Definitely worth a visit!
Aside: Sean’s websites themselves are full of great free lessons!
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Thursday, February 11, 2010
Have you ever wished you and your students could collaborate online by …
… sticking notes to fridges?
… rearranging those notes?
… commenting on these notes?
I know I have. So I was very excited when Opera Software introduced Unite into their browser. Unite offers several applications running in your browser. One of them is the Fridge, which [...]
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
From those whom I follow on Twitter these interesting links emerged today:
Comics
Top 12 Sites To Watch Videos That Are Better Than YouTube
Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators (free ebook)
Moodle Hosting (Free basic Moodle hosting. I have no idea how good they are, how nice they will play in future or else. I just thought you [...]
Let’s face it: reading is necessary for learning.
However, reading a text and comprehending or creating meaning from it are two different things. To help students you can show them various strategies that will help them get along. Quite a number of those strategies have been collected here. Some even with videos!
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
… you suddenly realise, right in the middle of a lesson, that the text you gave to your students is way too difficult?
Let me explain the situation.
I’ve, well, inherited, a class from a colleague who claimed that said class was really good and advanced. Right in the first lesson I realised that my colleague obviously [...]
Ok, the headline is lame. But still, it is nice to listen to David Crystal talking about how new inventions in media changed and still change language:
As a side benefit, the video links to Global from Macmillan Education where you might find some useful elessons. I did.
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Following other teachers via Twitter has its uses. I probably wouldn’t have found this lovely site without it: Blogs: Free ESL Materials.com | Blogging | Lesson Plans. If you are an ESL teacher like me, it is a great resource.
I especially like Breaking News English. Here you can find not only topical texts but also
warm-ups
mp3 [...]
If I ever have to teach TV news again, I’ll definitely use this lovely video:
It is hillarious, it is so true, but it will definitely need subtitles or a transscript for my students. Nevertheless, it is worth the work!
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This book (Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching) seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Strangely, there are no reviews on Amazon for it yet. The contents are impressive, as is the price tag: a hefty €35-40.
The book is promoted in the Moodle Language teaching community and probably worth the money, so I’ll [...]
