Online Video: What does it have to offer teachers and learners?

This series of postings are the result of a training presentation I was asked to deliver for Moroccan teachers of English in Kinitra on 15th December 08.To prepare the session I looked back at many of the postings from my blogs over the last 18 months and thought about some of the changes that have been taking place in the way online video sharing has developed.I've split the materials from the session into four sections.Online Video: For Language...

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Online Video: As Knowledge Resource

Since the birth of YouTube, the web has seen huge growth in the availability and quality of user generated online video. With just a simple webcam, or a digital camera or camcorder it is now possible for teachers and students to create and share their knowledge and experience of a vast range of topics. It's also possible for them to access a global pool of knowledge and experience from cultures all over the world.YouTube YouTube was originally set...

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Online Video: As Communication

Over the past couple of years online video communication has been transformed, not only price and quality, but in ease of use and accessibility. This tool has great potential for extending the reaches of our classroom and opening access to much better support for distance learners.Video conferencingVideo conferencing was once a very difficult and expensive activity that required specific software, hardware and in many cases an expensive account with...

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Online Video: Authentic Genres

Over the past few years video sharing websites have become increasingly specialised, bringing about the development of different 'genres' of video sharing sites. As online video increasingly competes with TV this has also brought about the development of genres of 'micro shows'. These are complete episodes of shows that take place within 2 - 5 mins. This is an ideal length both for or 'digital native' students with their characteristically shorter...

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Online Video: For Language Development

There are now a number of online video sharing communities that are specifically designed to support the development of language and communication skills. These websites don't just provide us with video content, but also the tools to help us make authentic video accessible to learners.DotsubAuthentic video can be very challenging for language learners so at times it is useful to have translation in subtitles or a transcription of the text. Dotsub...

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Seven Things You Don't Need to Know About Me

I have been tagged by Gavin Dudeney for the ‘Seven Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me’ thing…So here are my seven things:1. My first teaching job was in a prison.While I was studying music at Dartington College of Arts I heard that they were looking for a guitar teacher and a nearby prison. I got the job and spent two years visiting a group of inmates each week and trying to teach them to play Blues. I recently found a journal that I kept of...

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A River of Images

I love the power of images and their adaptability for teaching, so I can't say that I'm upset to be almost overwhelmed with really great tools for exploiting Flickr at the moment. The latest of these is Flickriver, an incredibly simple Flickr search tool that creates an endless webpage (just keep scrolling and the page keeps getting longer!) of Flickr images based around either a search term or whatever it finds interesting on the particular day...

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Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1

I'm beginning to think that besides the actual computer itself, a WebCam is one of the most fundamentally useful tools we can possibly have to help us teach and learn a language and of course what's great about WebCams is that they are getting very cheap and many laptop computer come with one ready installed for free!Beware of bad hair days!!!!So I've decide to start a mini series of postings on 'Things you can do with a WebCam' - Even if you don't...

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Create Image Books

I've always liked sites that take images and enable you to do something interesting with them. Pim Pam Pum seems to be a company that is remarkably good at helping us to make the most of Flickr images, and I particularly like this little tool called Bookr.Bookr enable us to create nice interactive image books with text captions.Here's an example that I created based on the poem 'In White' by Robert Frost.I found the words to the poem on Poem Hunter...

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A Tool for Comparing Words

I've just found this very useful tool that allows you to compare words and phrases and how they are used online. It works very simply by taking the two words or phrases that you type in and searching through Google to give you the results for each word. It tells you which is the most popular and how many pages each one appears in.There are a few other tools around which can do a similar thing, but I prefer Google Battle, (an alternative is Google...

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Text to Speech Movies for EFL ESL

Yesterday on my Quick Shout blog, I wrote about a new tool called Xtranormal for creating text to speech animated movies. Since then I've had a little time to put together a tutorial video and think about how to use it in the classroom. First I thought I'd show you what extra normal produces.There is quite a range of characters and backgrounds so the possibilities for creating situational dialogues is terrific and you can also build these scenes...

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Filming in Second Life 1

Last Sunday, I was lucky enough to make my debut as an educational chat show host on The Consultants-E's Edunation Island where I interviewed Gavin Dudeney. In an attempt to capture this moment in my personal history I decided to video record the event with the intention of editing it into a kind of 'highlights of' show.Since I posted the first clip from this on my Quick Shout blog, I've had a number of people asking me how I recorded it and what...

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