3B Village 3D browser

I spotted 3B Village about a year ago and initially I was impressed, but some recent developments have, I feel, put this on the map as a really useful educational tool.What is 3B Village?3B Village is an amazing cross between a 3D virtual chat room and a web browser. Using the free software you can visit or create your own 3D rooms which have walls lined with webpages that you can click on to visit. You use an avatar to wander the rooms visiting various websites whilst text chatting with other virtual visitors.Watch a demo here: Exploring 3B Village...

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Create your own game

This is something that caught my eye last week. I just couldn't resist adding a feature about it here, though I think this does come with some warnings and reservations.Pictogame.com is a website which enables you to create your own games very easily with just a few easy steps. All you need to do is:upload a picture, select the part of it you want to show choose a game typeadd in a title and description. Then you simply click to see the completed game. You need to register to upload and save the game, but it's free and very quick to do. There...

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Making quizzes for i-pod

With the growth in interest in mobile learning and the ubiquitous nature of the i-pod among our younger (and increasingly older) students this piece of software looks like a really useful tool we can use to extend learning beyond the classroom.The software I’m referring to is I-Quiz Maker. You can download I-Quiz Maker for free at:http://www.iquizmaker.com/Once you’ve installed it you can make quizzes using either True / False question types or Multiple Choice questions. The quizzes a very simple to make and you can make as many questions as you...

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Interactive multiple choice activities

This is the third part in a series that I’m writing on how to use word processors to create computer-based materials. This one looks at how we can create interactive multiple choice activities using 'dropdown' menus.Multiple choice must be one of the most common question types in the history of education. I’m sure we all answered them when we were at school and we have all given these question types to our students.When I was at school, we used to call them ‘multiple guess’ questions, because we knew that even if we didn’t have any idea what the...

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Machinima with Moviestorm

I recently came across a very impressive piece of software for making Machinima. It’s still in Beta at the moment, and it’s free, so I’ve spent a bit of time looking at it and seeing how it works.For those of you who don’t know, machinima is a form of animated cinema, which is produced in computer games or virtual worlds. In some case the animated characters are ‘played’ by avatars and in others the characters are figures within a virtual world which are controlled by a ‘producer’.Moviestorm offers the second of these two options, so once you have...

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Exploiting two computer-based RPGs

In this article I’d like to look at how we could use two computer based RPGs (Role playing games) as the basis for language development.The two RPGs that I’m suggesting you use are both very similar and very different.They are very similar in that they are both simulations of everyday life scenarios and involve day to day ‘survival’ type choices.They are very different in that the situations they are based around are a stark contrast between life...

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Teacher Training Videos

Over the last few weeks I’ve been exploring some of the content on Russell Stannard’s http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/ website. The videos aren’t pedagogical type classroom videos of teachers working with students, as you might at first assume from the title, but are video tutorials which show how to use various software and websites to develop your teaching.What’s on the siteThe site is aimed at ELT teachers who are interested in developing their technology skills for teaching purposes. The main content of the site is split into three...

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Creating an interactive cloze text

This is the second part in a series of tutorials based around using word processors to create interactive and multimedia materials.This tutorial looks at how you can use a word processor to create a close text - also known as a 'gap fill'- that users can interact with on their computer.This is quite a common type of activity that we use in the classroom. The students usually do it in a book and then the teacher tells them the answers. But we can create these materials to be used on the computer.Here is an example text that I created based around...

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Phonology can be fun and free

Phonetics Focus is a really wonderful new free resource produced by Cambridge English Online Ltd.Basically it is a collection of interactive multimedia Flash based games and resources that can be accessed through the CEO website at http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/What is it?In all there are almost 20 different interactive tools all accessible through the one page. These vary from an interactive phonemic chart where users can click on the symbols to hear the sounds and so develop their knowledge of the chart and the phonemic alphabet,...

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Creating a mobile phone website

With the growth in interest in mobile and handheld learning, I thought I’d investigate one of the many new Web 2.0 type start ups that are offering free (at the moment at least) services for setting up websites and web based communities to be accessed on mobile phones and other mobile devices.The one I’ve started with is a service called Winksite. On the home page of their website the company claims that, “Winksite makes it easy to publish mobile websites and communities that can be viewed worldwide on any phone.” So I thought I would try to set...

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Looking at There.com

For a while now I’ve been a fan of the virtual 3D world There.com. Although it isn’t as developed and hasn’t had a fraction of the publicity of Second Life I think there are a few things in its favour and for anyone wanting to take some steps into teaching in virtual worlds or for students who are interested in finding others to chat to or practice their language skills with, they could do far worse.What is there.com?It’s a simple 3D online virtual...

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MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’

This is the first in what I hope will become a series of tutorials on exploiting the teaching / learning potential of some of the more common desktop applications like MS Word. Like many people I’m a regular user of this application and it’s probably the one I use most, with the exception of my web browser.Despite the amount of time I have spent using it, I’m often surprised to discover another useful toolbar or technique that I can use to make life easier or my teaching more effective.This first tutorial shows how to use the ‘comments’ feature...

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Interactive presentations

I’ve just been looking at a really interesting on line tool called Voicethread.What's Voicethread?Voice thread enables users to create online presentations using their own images. It also allows the creator to add audio or written text to the images and give access to other people to leave audio or text comments on the presentation. This is a really nice way of creating presentations that can interact and create dialogue with an online audience.Here’s a couple that I’ve created. I decided that I wanted to use this tool for a class of students I...

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Subtitling your video clips

I’ve just been looking at a really excellent Beta site called Dot SubThe site is an interesting adaptation of the Youtube model. People can upload videos (up to 300Mb) and share them among limited groups or with everyone.What’s really interesting though about Dot Sub is that it is aimed at subtitling and translation for people with hearing problems. The video tool allows you to input subtitles beneath the clip. These can either be translations or transcriptions. Users can also upload clips for others to translate for them. The site isn’t limited...

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Teaching English in Second Life

Over the past few weeks I've been pretty busy teaching my first English students on a Business English course I have been developing for Second Life.The experience has been pretty daunting with myself and the students having to come to terms with the complexities of the user interface and I have felt at times that my fifteen years of 'real world' classroom experience and the subconscious habits and reflexes that I developed over that period have totally deserted me.The introduction of voice within SL has certainly made a huge difference, though...

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Voice in Second Life

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out the new voice client for Second Life and despite a few remaining bugs with voice groupings it seems to work pretty well. It is sensitive to distance and location! If you turn around while someone is speaking to you, it really does sound like they are behind you etc.It is possible to put groups / pairs of students (avatars) into different groups so that they can only hear the 'person' within their pair or group and for the 'teacher' to switch between groups to listen in on how each group is doing....

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Materials design for Virtual Worlds

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to give a presentation on course and materials design for Second Life at the SLanguages 2007 virtual conference (June 23rd 2007) which took place on the Edunation Island in Second life. The conference itself was a fascinating event and the experience of presenting a conference paper within a virtual world to an audience of avatars was certainly a new and novel one for me.I was asked to give this presentation because I have been working over the last few months on designing a Business English course for...

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Developing screencast tutorials

There's a very handy web based tool called Screencast-o-matic that I've just spotted. If you go to the website and simply click on 'Create' you should be able to record and make movies of your on screen activity. This isn't anything new as there are quite a few software tools that you can either buy or download to do this, but what's good about this tool as that it all works through the web page and also allows you to create an account and save your screencasts online. This makes it much easier to share them.The tool is very easy to use and it...

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Exam Practice

I’ve just been doing some writing work for a really useful site called Exam English. The site specialises in providing information and free practice materials for a variety of English language exams including IELTS, TOEFL and the range of Cambridge exams..The practice materials are mostly Flash based and are interactive. They test a range of skills and grammar, and you get the results at the end as well as the chance to review your answers. Many cover listening skills with professional quality recordings for students to listen to.I’ve just written...

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Creating an Online Classroom

The Nicenet Classroom Assistant is a really useful tool which enables teachers to very quickly and simply create their own virtual learning environment. I’ve been using this with various classes and groups of teachers for the last 7 or 8 years and it has remained reliable, stable, safe and free.FeaturesThe VLE it creates has a number of useful features.A messaging function which allows registered users to send personal or group messages to others registered on the VLE (this can be configured to forward messages on to email addresses if the user...

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Pronunciation videos

This is a useful site if you are teaching pronunciation. Though it could take some time to load the first time you use it.There is a phonemic chart which has small audio clips of the phonemes along with video clips that show the mouth movements as the sounds are made. (Be warned, this is quite a big file)Open pronunciation chartYou simply click on the mouth and then watch and listen. I’m not so sure how helpful seeing the mouth is with some of the sounds, but with some it could be quite helpful.Because the chart is a Flash (swf) file if you right...

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Creating audio-visual monologues

Flipz TV is a really useful piece of free software for creating entertaining audio-visual materials.The software enables you to record your own audio monologues and lip-sync them with a choice of animated talking heads. It then turns them into small Flash files which can be run in a web browser. These can be put on the Internet, run form your computer desktop, or the Flash files can even be delivered to mobile phones.Here’s an example that I created using a Sonnet (130) by William Shakespeare. (You’ll need to have the sound o your computer turned...

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Make you own animated movies

D- film is a really useful website that has been around for a few years now. The site makes it very easy to create short animated movies with colourful characters and cartoon style dialogue in bubbles. (Be careful though, some of the characters may be unsuitable for younger learners less mature students.)The site is really easy to use and you just click your way through various screens selecting backgrounds, characters, scenarios, soundtrack and...

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BBC online media training

I’ve just seen that the BBC has released a lot of its own internal staff training courses and made them available free online at: http://www.bbctraining.com/onlineCourses.aspWhat's on the site?I’ve had a look through the courses and they really are good, especially if you want to work with audio for podcasts or video for projects. Some of them are very short, so even if you only have 10 – 15 mins to spare you can still get some development from them. I looked at one on interviewing for radio:This one has some really useful audio files of interviews...

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Tutorial: Using Videos from YouTube

Sites like YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/) can be a really rich source of authentic video and audio. Many of the videos are great for the ELT classroom because they are quite short, so they don’t take too long to download and there is a vast collection all for free.Sending students, particularly younger ones to a site like this can be very risky though. Even if you send them directly to the page with the video you want them to watch, you never know what other links are likely to be on the page and what kinds of unsuitable things they might take...

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