- "Blogging is Learning" warm up activity. Watch the video below and write a short paragraph on how blogging can turn into a powerful teaching tool.
- Your paragraph should follow the "hamburger" structure (see the Reading Rockets handout for details).
- Example 1 and Example 2 (Paragraph Song) could give you a helping hand. Post your paragraph below, in the "Comments" section.
- Create an audio message for your students using one of the three tools recommended below and embed it on your blog. Post the link below, as a comment.
- You can create audio assignments for your students or you can ask your students to create their own talking avatars and place the link on your blog as a comment.
a) Voki: is an educational tool that allows users to create their very own talking character. Voki characters can be customized to look like historical figures, cartoons, animals, and even yourself! Give your Voki a voice by recording with a microphone or uploading an audio file. Voki characters can be emailed, shared on social media, and embedded on websites.
- Instructions posted on Scribd and the "A Turn to Learn" blog.
- Student examples
- Ideas on how to use Voki in the classroom: ReadWriteThink
b) Vacaroo: is a new service for sending voice messages to students by email or blog. It is a free service that allows users to create audio recordings without the need to install any software. You don't even have to create an account to use Vocaroo. All you need to provide is a microphone. To create a recording just go to Vocaroo.com, click record, grant Vocaroo access to your mic, and start talking. After completing your recording, Vocaroo gives you the choice to publish it or to scrap it and try again.
c) Blabberize: it allows you to quickly animate any image to make it talk, by simply adding audio and specifying the bottom lip or jaw section. Within minutes you have a talking photo and the novelty factor of this will never wear thin for students. They absolutely love Blabberize. Make a famous person speak, give an animal a voice, even add a mouth to an inanimate object like a hamburger and discuss its nutritional value.
- Please have a look at the assignments created by your colleagues.
- Leave comments to 3 of them directly on their blogs. This will help us exercise with blog commenting before we ask our students to do it.
- We would love you to share from your expertise on online resources - suggest new ideas, recommend tasks, post interesting links, point out strengths and help out with weaknesses. We can learn from each other as much as we can learn from the project!
- See two examples of comments below:
1. Olga's "English Teacher's Blog"
Olga, you did a very good job with the resource you found on Scribd. The book "How to write an essay" is short and clear, so I am sure your students will find it easy to read. In addition to the book, you could add a few fun YouTube videos about writing essays - this is a good method to develop students reading, writing and listening skills in one assignment:
2. Tatiana's "English is Fun" blog.
Tatiana, wonderful post video activities! I would only suggest adding a few vocabulary related tasks. For example: "I had an argument with my mom" - please find two synonyms for the word "argument" in the online dictionary Thesaurus.com or Synonym.com. If you want to add a dictionary to your blog, you need to find its embedding code and paste it into your blog, just like with YouTube videos for example. Oxford Dictionary code can be found here and the Cambridge dictionary code can be found here.
EFL Blogging School participants assignments
1. Olga's "English Teacher's Blog"
2. Tatiana's "English is Fun" blog
3. Elena's "Teaching English" blog
4. Natalia's "Let's learn English together" blog
5. Aliona's "My teaching portfolio" blog
6. Veronica's "English for you and me" blog
7. Oxana's "Learning English together" blog
8. Viorica's "English Teaching World" blog
9. Dumitru's "For teaching ESL and EFL" blog
10. Victoria's "English Linguistic Club" blog:
11. Ludmila's "EGT 18 English Class" blog
12. Natalia's "English lives in us" blog
13. Eduards's "Eduard Rudenco's University" blog:
14. Natalia's "Intercultural exchange" blog
15. Veronica's "My site - a new chapter in my life" blog
16. Nelea's "Do you speak English?" blog
17. Nicoleta's "11th form learning to learn English" blog
18. Marianna's "Introduction to Germanistics for EFL students" blog
19. Irina's "English Didactics" blog
20. Ecaterina's "The English Foreign Language Department" blog
21. Rodica's "My blog" blog
22. Emma's "The Alchemy of Teaching" blog
23. Viorica's "Let's learn loving English" blog
24. Victoria's "Pathway to English" blog
One of the best updated blogs on using technology in teaching English is "Larry Ferlazzo Edublog"
If you want to learn more about other websites which can be used to improve students speaking skills, check this post out: Best sites to practice student speaking skills .