Global Citizen Prezis

In English, we are exploring the topic of what it means to be a global citizen.  Students used a website called Prezi to create dynamic presentations concerning this topic.  Here are some exemplars:

Global Citizen on Prezi

Global Citizen on Prezi

Goanimate

Students in my English class used www.goanimate.com to create responses to a short story they read that dealt with the topic of slavery and freedom.  Here are some of the productions:

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Linoit Poetry

The English students composed poems of different varieties.  They used a website called Picfont to put their poems onto photographs.  Then, they used a website called Linoit to display their creations.

Here are a couple examples.

Poetry page one.

Poetry page two.

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a great site for creating animations.

It offers a nice balance between simplicity to use and complexity of features. My English students all enjoyed creating animations.

Here are a couple of examples.

GoAnimate.com: Ghost squad Alpha squadron by Ghost239


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

GoAnimate.com: A day at the vending machine by Ryan Marcoux


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Dialogue Activity

Here is an activity my English students did in order to practice properly writing quotations.

Much of it was borrowed from a lesson plan I found on the National Writing Project website.  On their site you will find a variety of situations that would involve conversations.

I instructed the students to work in pairs.  Each duo selected a scenario, then composed a dialogue.  At first, the students tried using a website called, “Collabedit,” which is supposed to allow multiple authors to collaborate in real-time on a single document.  Unfortunately, we found this website to be too buggy; the students encountered many glitches and error messages.  So, we had to settle on using good old Microsoft Word.

Writing collaboratively was fun and the students were very motivated to write.

Spelling Connections

Previously, I alluded to a promising new website that I will be utilizing in my English class. The website is called, "Spelling Connections." Larry Ferlazzo introduced me to it.

Spelling Connections allows teachers to set-up classroom accounts, so student scores are automatically recorded. The quiz results are not saved on the student accounts; therefore, the possibility of cheating is reduced.


There are four categories of activities. Each category has activities in 8 different grade levels. Each grade level contains approximately 30 quizzes. So, there is a lot of stuff.

The activities are challenging, but the site allows students to try repeatedly until they achieve a score with which they are satisfied. My preferred activity, and the one which I have started my class using, is the cloze sentences.


The spelling activity is also good. A word is spoken, and the student must attempt to spell it.

All in all, it is a great website!

Cheating

For a few weeks now, I have been passively seeking a new site for my English class to practice their reading comprehension skills. I am a busy teacher; we all are. I want a site with prefabricated exercises that will allow the students to complete their work online and feed me the results.

I had been using MyTestBook. This is a great site, to be sure. It satisfies all of the requirements iterated in the preceding paragraph. But MyTestBook has an Achilles' Heel. I became aware that at least one of my students was cheating. He was logging into a classmate's account and viewing the other's completed, corrected quiz in order to glean the answers. So, I stopped using MyTestBook.

I suppose cheating is as old as schools. I could have continued to utilize MyTestBook, and to monitor the students as they did the assignments, but this was not how I want the internet to serve my class. I want a site that will allow the students to complete their assignments independently, at their own pace, and at home, if necessary. I do not want to have to hover over the students as they travail. A teacher must don many caps, but the role of policeman is not one I relish.

So I waited. Patiently. And then, finally, Providence arrived. But that, Dear Readers, is a story for another post.

Photo by Jim B L.

Protagonize

Previously, I wrote that the website Protagonize is blocked at our school. It turns out that students can access the site by bypassing the front page. So, my English students were able to contribute to a collaborative story I started.

I enjoyed the collaborative story activity; I think the students did too. I will do more of it in the future. It is interesting to see where each student leads the story and some of their randomly creative ideas were funny to read.

Our class story is here.

Voicethread Life

Today, I used Voicethread for the first time. Judging from the comments and reviews that I have read on various blogs, this seems to be quite a popular application. Its popularity is understandable. Voicethread allows you to upload media, such as videos, documents, photos or slideshows. Then, other users can comment on your media. Comments can be written or spoken. The users who have commented are displayed as icons in the margins of your media. Also, when someone makes a comment, they can supplement their comment with sketches on the media.

You can see for yourself what I did with my class. I posted a picture and asked the students to leave a spoken comment about the picture. I expected the students to only utter a brief word or two, but the results were pleasantly relevant and insightful.

EnglishCentral

Today, my English students started using EnglishCentral to practice their speaking skills.

The website requires a headset with a microphone. 

The student watches a video clip; there are hundreds from which to choose.  The videos have subtitles.  After each sentence, the student pauses the video and records himself repeating the sentence.  The student’s utterance is measured against the original and the student receives a score.

The website keeps profiles with scores, videos watched and achievements.

My students really enjoyed the activity.  Anything which is presented as a game seems to boost motivation.

Xtranormal

Xtranormal allows users to produce short movies.  In order to make your characters speak, you type the text you want your characters to say, and then the program converts the text to speech.  There are different scenarios to choose from; the characters can be animated; and, you can choose the camera angle for each scene.  A movie created by one of my students is here.

Citation Machine

I am told that one of the skills that students who go to college are lacking is the ability to cite sources.  With this in mind, I designed an activity to help my English students practise using citations.  Inspired by this Glog, I instructed my students to create their own Glog that presented an animal of their choice.  They were to find pictures, information and a map from at least five different sources.  Then, using, the website, “Son of Citation Machine,” they were to cite their sources of information.

Here is the Glog created by one of my students.  Although she lost marks for not creating proper MLA citations, overall, the poster is nicely done.  Most of the students had a lot of fun using Glogster.

Unplugged

I found a website that has some nice webquests on it, by the United Kingdom National Portrait Gallery.

I asked my English students to try one of the webquests, in which they had to analyze a Rudyard Kipling “Just So Story” and write their own “Just So Story.”

However, it quickly became evident that the students would not be able to complete this task.  For two reasons.

First of all, they do not have the requisite skills to analyze a story, then write their own story in a similar style. 

Second of all, many of the students are only marginally motivated academically; and when the temptations of the internet are laid before them, they cannot resist surfing away to distracting websites.  I had been so focussed on incorporating the internet in my pedagogy, that I failed to acknowledge that IT can be a double-edged sword.  Access to computers can make students less productive.

So, today, we turned off the computers and went old school.  With me at the helm, modelling the process, we wrote a “Just So Story” together. 

I was worried that the students would be bored and resistant to the lesson, but they were involved, and I think most of them enjoyed it.  One student commented on her blog:

Today's class was really fun. We created a story about a retarded ghetto rhino with braces, horns, a laughing Hyena, and we laughed.

I explained to the students that the process of producing media always involves the same three steps: analyze, personalize, synthesize.

I was a bit anxious before the class started.  My plan was to have no plan.  I just wanted to write a story from scratch, using the students’ ideas as they threw them at me.  I think the students appreciated having the process modelled for them and enjoyed the spontaneity (and authenticity) of the process.  In the future, I plan on doing this again; hopefully, frequently, with other types of media.

It is good for the students to see me modelling the production process and to see me taking risks.  And it is good to spent time away from the computers.

Photo by Trzebiat.

Bombay TV

Larry Ferlazzo has some good lesson ideas on his Burbank High School blog.

One of the gems I found on Larry’s website was Bombay TV.

There are brief movie clips from India on this website, and users can write subtitles for the dialogue in the scenes.  My secondary English students had a lot of fun with this activity.  They embedded their creations on their English blogs.  One of my students even commented on his blog that he had fun in class.  This was nice to read.

Admittedly, some of the students pushed the envelope with the themes and language of their attempts at humour.  I had to tell one student to delete his unsuitable creation.  But, I suppose, every writer must wrestle with censorship and every writer must experiment with the sometimes nebulous boundaries of permissibility. 

As a teacher, too, I must try to balance what I believe to be acceptable within a school environment against my disinclination to stifle the creativity of the students.

Here is a movie I made:

UFC

Every time my secondary English students have a class, I require them to read one chapter from a novel, then write on their blogs a summary of that chapter.

It is a derivative of my student-centred philosophy that the students are allowed to choose their reading material, as opposed to having me assign a single novel for everybody.  I think it important for students to enjoy the experience of reading and writing, and not feel like it is an onerous task.

One of my students asked if he could write a reaction to a magazine article.  I hesitantly agreed.  I would like to share his summary of the article, or rather, as he states, the articles.  It concerns the topic of UFC wrestling.

UFC 103 took place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. It was headlined by the main event bout between Rich ''Ace'' Franklin, and Vitor ''The Phenom'' Belfort. I didn't get the chance to watch UFC 103, so I read many articles describing it. I was impressed by some of the fight outcomes. First of all, I thought that Rich Franklin would of made short work of Vitor Belfort due to his high level, and continuous training compared to Vitor. But one variable which I didn't consider was that Vitor has changed training camps, and has restarted training seriously, with some of the top martial artists in the world. You see, when Vitor was only 19 years old, he concurred the light heavyweight division with ease, but due to many misshapennings in his personal life and career, he fell into depression and stopped training like he should of been thinking he had it all under his belt. For many years, his career just went downhill, and the young strong and lightning handed Vitor we used to know faded away. Unfortunately for “Ace”, the Vitor that showed up in the octagon that night appeared to be the young and feisty 19year old whom literally destroyed some of the most deadliest fighters in MMA history.

It brought a little smile to my face to read this student’s blog entry.  Personally, I do not know anything about UFC wrestling, and truthfully, it does not interest me; but you can tell from the tone of his essay that this student is passionate about UFC.  If I didn’t know any better, I would almost believe that he enjoyed writing and sharing his opinions.  I would wager, he enjoyed writing about UFC more than he would have enjoyed writing about they symbolism of the conch in “Lord of the Flies.”

Photo by deskounlmtd.net.