Hi!
I would like to share www.glosbokens.se with you. It is a webpage where pupils can practice vocabulary. This webpage started in 2002 by some students at Luleå Tekniska högskola. They wanted to have a more fun way to learn vocabulary and made this webpage.
There are similarities to glosor.eu but I think that glosboken is easier and better to use. The main similarities are of course that it gives pupils the opportunity to practice and improve their vocabulary. On glosboken you can play games with the words that you need to practice. Easy games like Hang the man and memory. There is also a text-to-speech-button so you can hear how the words are pronounced. As a teacher I can create different courses for my pupil. For example I have some children that need a little easier word and to practice words like weekdays, colours and food then I create courses made for their needs. Of course the other pupils can use that too. To be able to use the courses I made they need a link. That might sound easy but my experience is that some have a hard time with getting the link in order and subscribing to the page. A good thing to avoid this is to work it thru with the pupils on for instance an IWB or with help from a projector.
As soon as you have an account you can start to work at the page. I have already written a course with the next week words that they have for exercise so it is only to start working. They can choose to “plugga” and there they can choose between 1. “Genomgång” – mean that they can review all the words, 2. “Öva” – is practice and 3.”Förhör” – is examination. There is a Smart-learning-button while using it one can repeat all the wrong answers. If they want to it is possible to play games, “Hangman”, “Memory” and my favorite “Banka glosor” where you hammer a mole holding a sign with the right word on. It is on time and if you ask me, very, very funny!
As a teacher I can control what my pupil exercise on, in a different way from glosor.eu. Here I give pupils (and parents) a direct link to the exercises I have made. And by putting the vocabulary on an internet based service like this you avoid the problems with pupils not taking their homework with them home. Most pupils do have a computer with access to internet.
/Gunilla

I want to describe ICT resources for teachers to introduce and for pupils to use. I want to present Internet (weather sites) and FLOD (flod.nu). They give a lot of possibilities.

When I read the book “How to teach English with technology” by Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hookly I got the idea to do a lesson/project about “weather”. They talked about the lower level grades in school and the work with weather. I got very interested because I work with children in the first, second and the third grade and we are going to learn about different kind of weathers.

I started to seek on Internet and I found a lot of different tools for this lesson. In my school we have “FLOD”(flod.nu). There I found a lot of TV-programmes and movies at “Kids English Zone” (26 different programmes and one of them about weather. FLOD is a nice tool because you can show programmes in the classroom when you want to, instead of borrow a programme a few days. I found www.weather.com and www. weather.yahoo too. I thought that I could use them all in my English lesson about weather.

In my classroom I only have one computer but I can show movies and TV-programmes and so on with a screen on the whiteboard. It is an easy technology tool for me to use. We can see and discuss the programmes together.

Back to the lesson about weather, before we look at the programme and the weather sites I want to give the pupils a comprehension in the English language about the different kind of weather we have. At the first we look outdoor throw the window and talk about the weather today. Then we talk about what different kind of weathers we have; sunny, cloudy, rainy, windy and snowy weather. I ask them if they know some of them in English. Maybe they do and we can learn from each other to.

Then we practice the new words by looking at “What the weather like?” from “Kids English Zone”. I want to show this to them because it is a funny and child-friendly program and the pupils can see and hear the perhaps new words.

Some other words we can learn for example are degrees, north, south, east and west…

Then the pupils can do their own weather report and show each other. They can practice the words by talking and showing the other pupils.

At the end of the day/lesson we look at a real weather report from for example United Kingdom. They talk very fast, but many of the words the pupils already have heard. Now they can practise listening and watching the new words they have learnt.

Then they can do exercises in pairs by the Internet weather sites from United Kingdom to get the English language. They can seek for the weather in different kind of towns or countries today or in the next week. They can seek for snow if they like skiing, they can seek for warm and sunny places if they want to bath or swim in the sea or something like this. Maybe someone in the class is going on a holiday trip and wants to know the weather. They can work in pairs and at the end of the lesson they can tell the rest of the class what they found out.

It is good idea for teachers to use Internet in the classroom. Teachers can find a lot of stuff they don’t have at the school. In the way of saving money… the teachers actually can use a lot of good stuff from Internet to show the pupils and the class can see, listen and then talk about it too. The teachers can do exercises for the pupils and they have to seek for the answers on Internet. This time the stuff came from the weather sites and weather programmes.

Internet is a precious treasure for us to dig in. It is only the time and imagination that can stop us. It is a great complement to our textbooks and workbooks and so on…

Carina Bredin

British Council - Learn English Kids and Teaching English

A resource I think is very useful is a website with the purpose to help children learn English and have fun. You find it at http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/

The site is organized in the following tabs: Kids games, Listen & watch, Read & write, Make and Speak & spell. When you do an exercise you also have two boxes to the right. One of them shows other exercises in the same theme, and the other shows equal exercises but in other themes. This allows you to find other exercises depending on your purpose with the training, to learn more about a topic or do similar activities.

The British Council site actually contains several sites, among them Learn English, which is for adults learning English, Teaching English, which is for teachers and Learn English Kids for children learning English.

The Teaching English site is organized in the tabs: Teaching resources, Teacher development, Training courses, Articles and Community. To be able to comment and join discussions you can register as a member. Then you also receive a newsletter which holds news on the latest content on the site. I have already found it useful and it contains a lot of interesting reading. During the autumn it has for example been lesson plans and activities about sports because The Olympic Game will take place in London next summer. You can also sign up for the monthly Learn English Kids newsletter for parents and teachers of children aged 6-12.

As an example of how pupils can use the Learn English Kids site, click on the Listen & Watch tab and then Songs. The Choose Ten little aeroplanes exercise trains a pupil to count 1-10 forwards and backwards. There is a streamed video and you can choose if you want to see the texts or not. There is also a game and the lyrics. If you log in you can also print the lyrics, the sheet music or download audio to listen without streaming.

As with many websites it is easy to get lost in cyberspace and it is hard to focus on the task, and not only for pupils … My suggestion is that the teacher links directly to the webpage. If pupils search themselves, even if only inside Learn English Kids, they may get stuck at something else. My dream is to have a class blog where I can put links to the sites I want pupils to visit. How to solve this otherwise depends on how the pupils are logged in at the school and how the computers at school are managed.

Eleonor

The sound recorder as an ICT resource

The sound recorder

I think that one of the easiest ICT resources to use with pupils in school is the sound recorder. You can use it in many of the subjects in school, for example learning English orally or practising oral presentations in other subjects.

The sound recorder is a program that is installed originally on the computer. It is easy to find and use. To record sounds you also need to have access to a microphone, easiest is to use a headset with its microphone.

The steps to go for make it work:

1. first you make a click at the start button on the computer
2. then you choose all programs
3. then you choose accessories
4. then you choose entertainment
5. at last you choose the sound recorder

The sound recorder will then apply on the computer screen.

The steps to go to use it:

1. put on the headset
2. stick the contact for the headset and the microphone in the computer
3. start the recording, click on the red button at the sound recorder
4. to stop recording, press the rectangular stop button
5. you will also find the back and forth buttons on the sound recorder

Don't forget to save the file after each recording. You do it on archive and then save as, the normal way of saving files/documents on the computer.

How can the sound recorder be used by teachers and pupils?

The answer to the above questions is, on many ways. First the teachers need to have clear purposes and goals for using the sound recorder in the education, both for themselves and the pupils. For example in oral English; it may sometimes be difficult as a teacher to find time to listen to all the students orally in the classroom. One way might be to allow students to record oral assignments by using a sound recorder. By doing this several times from the beginning of a semester it will be possible to see the students' development.

Most of the students have a computer at home and are probably already familiar with it. It is possible to work with tasks to record both in school and at home. Most of the pupils like to use technology so they will probably be more motivated. It is also well known that pupils often are very nervous when they are going to speak at school. Often they only practise by taking the time of their speech and they can’t listen to what they have said afterwards. Therefore using a sound recorder is a very helpful resource for the pupils. They get the opportunity to practice their pronunciation and it will help them become more secure when they talk in front of others.

Other considerations when using a sound recorder:

• how many computers are possible to use in your school
• how do you solve the work practically in school
• you need to educate all the pupils in how to use/work with the sound recorder
• clear purposes and goals for using the sound recorder in the education
• it is important to tell the pupils when their work is just practicing and when they will be exam

I think the greatest impact of using sound recorder in teaching is the possibility to follow the pupils' oral development, and getting motivated and safer pupils.

Is this something for you?

Pia Johansson

Interesting Posts and comments.

Thank you very much for your posts, Maria and Ann. I won't comment on them here or directly on your posts as I think first this should be done by other students. You have made some very interesting contributions.


Jon
From a cold, wet and windy Valladolid

Active board as an ICT resource

Active board as an ICT resource
What the Active board is, how it works and what you need to make it work:

Active boards are fantastic tools that stimulate and catch the children’s attention. You need a computer and a projector to make it work. The programme Active inspires comes with the board, which is a software product that claims many different things. There are speakers connected to the board. You can watch films, make flipcharts, download all programmes from internet and then work with them on the big screen. Active boards make things more clear with the big screen and a great strength is the ability for the students to write on it and save everything.

How can the Active board be used by teachers?
Teachers can plan their lessons, prepare, write and save. You can make interesting flipcharts (an interactive lesson) for all subjects and the pupils can work with them. You can save all your work and you can use the “Active board’s bank” to catch up with other teacher’s lessons (or flipcharts) like on the website; www.lektion.se. On our school we also have our own “bank” with flipcharts! When I download programmes from internet I know that all students can see them clear on the same time. It is also great for all computer work, when you teach how to work on the computer, to make PowerPoint for example, all pupils see clear while I show them all the tools! You can buy many different interactive versions of course books, English for example. If some pupil is sick, they can watch and work with all the saved lessons later! It is a good way to get the pupils motivated and interested, above all when you start something new!

How can the Active board be used by pupils?
The pupils can draw pictures, write, count, play games, watch films, work together with interactive things and programmes and everything they do can be shown on the big screen. They see everything they do in a bigger way. They can show everything they do on the computer on the Active board. Showing pupil’s photo story is fantastic! Everything they do can be saved.


Other considerations when using the Active board:
You do need a learning period, there are a lot of functions and tools and it takes time to learn everything! You shouldn’t use it too often in the same way, because the children might make it a habit and find it boring, don’t do the same thing all the time. This is a technical device and sometimes technique things go wrong and you might need a lesson backup. I have had an Active board for two years and once it didn’t work!




Maria Thunberg

Photo Story, Tyda and English zone

Hello again in my last blogpost here.

This will be my very last examples of working with ICT as a teacher in English: I want to make stories out of the programme Photo Story. I´ve made it in Swedish and social science together with a colleague, but I think it would be nice doing this in English with simple dialogues. They can through pictures record themselves saying Hello. What´s your name? What are you doing? etc This is pupils in the age of 8 years and they have been studying English during 1½year with me. I think it would be nice doing this practice in a different way than just saying it in the classroom to eachother. You also get the shy pupils to speak louder when you record it this way I think. Maybe I will have this as a project in my essay in Module 1C??

I also want to tell you about the iPhone-application ”tyda” and how useful it is. Dictionary is too heavy for my young learners, but they use ”tyda” through my iPhone now and then in the classroom. I myself also use ”tyda” when pupils ask me about a word I can´t remember or if I´m unsure about spelling a word. I use ”tyda” also in my own Englishstudies and when I´m writing letters to relatives and friends in English all over the world. ”Tyda” is a sort of dictionary where you are able to look up words in a quick way from Swedish-English and English-Swedish. Recently I had a lesson with my pupils about fruits and vegetables. One of my pupils thought the words we´ve been practicing were too easy so he wanted to learn more words. He took help by me and ”Tyda” to spell and to learn the words for ”sparris”, ”rödbeta” och ”blomkål”, which we hadn´t talked about at all. He just wanted to learn more. Some of the pupils around him also wanted to learn these new words and suddenly ”tyda” made my pupils wanted to learn even more than I had ever imagined and expected!! J Now most of my pupils also know aspargus, beetroot and cauliflower. Isn´t this fantastic!?...

I also love to show the programmes produced by BBC called ”English zone”. It´s programmes giving a fun input to pupils who have recently started to learn English. The programmes lasts about 10 minutes and each of them have a subject about something you usually teach your pupils in, for example colors, fruits, numbers, familywords, clothes. I show them as ”streaming video” in my classroom now and then and I´m able to get them from ”Medioteket” (AV-centralen) in Stockholm, which is a place where schools in Stockholm are able to get support in all kind of media (books, films, recordings…) Fortunately I have a projector in my classroom so it´s very easy to do whenever it´s suitable in a certain lesson.

Regards again from Ann Goliath-Pillóla.