Metholodogy Pills No.11 - Receptive Skills Framework

It's been a while since my last post, but I'm back. I've been really busy working on two full time back to back CELTA courses, working on my PhD project and examining and so this has kept me away from blogging!  I've managed to put together a new Methodology Pill on Receptive Skills (Reading/Listening) Frameworks and so I hope it's useful. The main idea here is that of providing trainees with a visual way to the different stages a reading/listening skills lesson usually/may have. This video along with the PDFs in My Lesson Frameworks eBook provide a coherent set of support materials. It's important to note again that this video was created with 40min lessons in mind and that although for assessment purposes trainees are usually required to do only skimming and scanning tasks (because of the time constraint) more work on other sub-skills can be done in longer lessons.

TheConsultants-e's 10th Year Anniversary - a time to celebrate and enjoy their freebies

As you can see from the introductory description in the top block of this blog, I started blogging and implementing ICT into my teaching and training in a more formal and informed manner thanks to TheConsultants-e. It was 2008 when I embarked on a new wonderful, exciting and rewarding experience - their Certificate in Teaching Languages with Technology CertICT course fully validated by Trinity College London - not knowing this course would have had such a powerful impact on my personal and professional teaching and learning life!  

Nicky Hockly and Gaving Dudeney are the master minds and reknown gurus who run this online professional training company offering state-of-the-art courses and training in ICT implementation. But the story does not end here, this year they're celebrating their 10th anniversary and have got lots of pressies and freebies in store for you. This month of June they're giving away a scholarship for one of their fully accredited courses (the CertICt or the CertBET) so if you're interested do apply now - you may be the very lucky winner! Follow this link to find out more about all the wonderful freebies available.

Methodology Pills for Induced Reflection

Bookmarking, Tagging and PEARLTREES!

Bookmarking is an important part of our professional development as it helps us keep our links to important/interesting resources organised. The usual way we do it is by simply clicking on the bookmark button on our browser and that's it! Most people simply bookmark it and so it's saved to their Favourites. I used to do this all the time and one day I realised I had hundreds of links which I had bookmarked as 'favourite' but which were all in a potluck soup! Then, I was introduced to TAGGING and so I spent a day tagging my bookmarks. Now, there are different ways of bookmarking and the one you choose will be the one you fell more comfortable with. There are quite a few bookmark management tools around and 5 of these can be found in an interesting post in Jason Fitzpatrick's blog - Lifehacker here. I'll look at the ones I have used and which can talk about more confidently. These are: 

Diigo which is very versatile and allows you to add Diigolet to your Favourites Bar at the top of your browser...

 

... and so whenever you find a site you want to keep track of, you can do lots of things to the link other than just bookmark it. You can highlight, bookmark, add a sticky note, read later or share it, so there are quite a few good options. I particularly like the highlighting and sticky note options as often when reading I find parts that are especially interesting.

There's also Delicious which allows you to manage your bookmarks similarly but it doesn't have the extra features shown above. And the one that has really caught my attention lately because it is rather visual is Pearltrees.

Here's my Pearltree for you peek around and if you create an account feel free to pick any of my pearls - that's the idea, it's free, it's open and anyone can share and pick your pearls just as you can with anyone around. There's a premium option if you want to make them private and customise your page. I like mine being public!

Pearltrees is very easy to use too. If you install the Pearler - as shown below - in your brower bar all you have to do is click on it and then choose where you want your new bookmark to go.

This takes seconds! And what I find best of all is that you can create your pearls (folders) on the go. I'm a very visual learner and find that a Pearltree like this one caters best for my way of seeing things. I find it easier now to look through my bookmarks than before when going through my tags. We're all different of course so I'm not saying this is how it should be done, but my experience of it!   
I've also recently moved to Firefox, so I'm now off to explore how you can save and sync your bookmarks with them. I just saw the intro video and I like the fact that you can sync them across computers. You can also do this with other bookmarking tools, but I like how easy it seems with Firefox. I'll report on this later on. In any case, I think I'll stick to Pearltrees because it also allows you to add comments to your 'pearls' and share them. I think it'd be perfect if there was a mix between Diigo and pearltrees and you could highlight and add sticky notes to your pearls! Here's hoping :-)

TED Talks - Rita PIerson and her 'Every kid needs a champion!' talk

I just wanted to add this TED talk to my blog because I think it's inspiring! We all can make a difference.

Presentation and Movies for Education with POWTOON

I just came across Powtoon and I think it's really cool. I started by signing up for a free account and in 30min I came up with this 2.26min movie which I'll be sharing with the trainee teachers I have back at work. We've been talking about engagement in our sessions and so I thought creating a quick summary of the points discussed using this newly found tool was not only practical but a good opportunity to do it in a real way.

  

Now, I have just signed up for a year subscription because as an educator you also get a big discount. I'm going to be using Powtoon a lot as I believe in the benefits of a flipped classroom approach and have been supporting my trainees this way for over 2 years now. I particularly like Powtoon because although many could argue is just embellished PowerPoint, it isn't. It's definitely more catchy, but you can make it into a movie or a presentation and so one of the greatest benefits is that it can be used as short videos for content, to revise whatever you did in a session, to present new content so that in the classroom you focus on practiced - flipped classroom approach, etc. Why don't you try it your self and then leave a comment here? It'd be interesting to start a discussion about the Pros and Cons.

Explain Everything for iPad vs Snag it

It's been a few weeks since my last post on Audioboo and I have to say it's not been easy with a full time job, tutoring from home on 2 online courses and doing all the other bits and bobs I always get involved! It's all under control and it seems like I work and perform better when under pressure! 

Anyways, this blog entry is about Explain Everything, the Apple equivalent of Techsmith's Jing (Jing Pro has retired!) and the updated verion of Snagit . I recently inherited an iPad and so I decided to start using it as much as possible in as many ways as possible in equivalent manner to my desktop, tablet, notebook and laptop! Now, one of the aids I enjoy creating to support my teaching and my own learning too is screencasts. 

I started using Jing and immediately fell in love with it, but soon realised I needed another tool which would allow for more versatility and which offered more features. Jing Pro is great but has now retired and I still wanted more so I explored the free trial version of Snagit and we're now madly in love! :-) Also engineered by TechSmith and knowing the quality of Jing, I didn't hesitate one single minute before buying it. The more I use it and the more I like it to be honest. Now, going back to my inherited iPad (one! :-) I've started trying to find Apple equivalents to different software and so I found out from a colleague a couple of months ago that Explain Everything does pretty much the same. I've created a couple of screencasts for my students and and trainees and I think it's also a valid tool. I must confess that I'm still exploring it and that I think it's a little slower than Snagit, but that may definitely be because of my new 'old' iPad so I must be honest and give it the benefit of the doubt. In short, I still find Snagit a lot easier to use, but this may also be due to the fact that I've been using it longer. For the time being, I'll continue to use both and see if my opinions change somehow. I'll report back in a few weeks on my explorations!