Lena's Blog

Hardware and Software analysis

I used to work at Riverside School in Prague. It is a school that offers high educational standards and a welcoming family atmosphere.

Since it has been a couple of years since I have worked there the info may be slightly outdated but I will try my best to remember. The school is not a tech hub but they are trying really hard to update their computer resources regularly. They have one tech guy for all three school levels. He often complains that he can’t do what need to be done but I am sure finances is a big issue for our school.

So, overall the school has two computer labs with about 20 machines all together. They also have a computer applications class with about 15 computers. Primary school also has about 20 netbooks teachers can check out and make available to their classes. I hear that they use them quite a bit. Every classroom at least one computer and a printer as well.

I think all of the machines are PCs. Of course students can also bring their own computers to school. A wireless network is available to everyone on the school territory. There are a number of wireless hubs throughout all the schools. I believe that most of the Internet access is done wirelessly. Some of the computer in High school are located in the common area and can be used by students during breaks and by teachers, parents and friends of the school as needed. The computers in primary classrooms are intended for both teacher and student use. I think in upper school teachers have their own private ones, but in lower school they share with students. There are also a couple of floating laptop computers that subs and part time teachers can use.

The teachers’ lounge at primary school also has four computers for teacher use. Yearly years sight has two computers at the teachers’ lounge as well. All of the computers are connected to the same network and teacher can access the same information from any school sight (we have three).

Each classroom in the Early Years sight has an interactive white board. Primary school has one in the shared area as well as one in a classroom. The one in the shared area has a laptop teachers can use to access the Internet. When I was still teaching there no training was provided on the use of the interactive boards. But it was used quite frequently to access educational sites online as well as to show movies.

Most of the software available on the school computers was Windows XP as well as some open source word processing program. It caused a lot of problems because not all the computers had the same software on them and teachers were struggling to open and use their documents.

Riverside uses the software programme, Textease in the Primary School. Textease is a programme combining word processing with speech, desktop publishing and multimedia authoring.

Teaching aspect

Normally I would do a cultural unit with my kids. This is a 7^th grade beginner class who are learning about geography, countries and languages. I thought about some way in which this can be improved by using technology.

The whole geographical side of the Unit can be introduced with Google Earth.  While visiting different continents and countries we can assess what vocabulary the students know and introduce new vocabulary, e.g. names of continents, oceans, poles.

Then we can move to the individual countries where the students come from to present more specific vocabulary, e.g. coastline, mountain, fjord, boarder, sea, etc. Using this tool we can easily zoom in on the details of different countries to present more specific vocabulary.

Learning the vocab in the context of students’ countries make is more relevant to them. They can be in the position of experts as we look closer at their countries.

Also in this unit we talk about maps and directions. What we could do is use Google maps and ask students to create a map of the area they are familiar with putting pictures of their old school, house, favorite places to visit, friends, etc.  They can also use it to show how to give directions from one place to another by inserting a line between them and telling about it using vocal of direction and well as transportation. Students can use Voicethread to create a map of their area and directions on how to get from their house to school. Other students can leave voice or written comments. These activities can be stretched out over a couple of lessons.

Here is an example of a similar activity.

They can create the map as homework and do a write up of their map.  I think it could be a great tool to make it relevant to the kids. They often don’t come familiar with maps. So limiting the area and making it personal can take away the edge from this exercise. We usually crowd around the World map in the classroom and the students who are a bit quicker tend to get all the answers.  This assignment provides an opportunity to all the students to do the work. They can then use it in class to present their maps and also to quiz other students by giving descriptions to different places on their map and having the students find them. Again it puts the presenting student in the role of the expert as they quiz their friends.  ESL students don’t always have the opportunity to be the expert so the more ways the teacher can find to put them in that position the better.

As an alternative they can create a map of the school area together using collaborative feature of the map. I can create a map for our class and let them all participate in creating it.  They can put markers where they live in Prague and we can dip into transportation and compare how they get to school from their places.  Or they can put their favorite places in Prague and it can be used by other students in their home group who want to go and find something fun to do in Prague.

When teaching the cultural unit I usually  find pictures of places that represent my students culture like architectural styles, dress, flags. I use those as conversation starters. They are usually very surprised and pleased to see these visual representation of their cultures.   I can also ask students to find a picture of a place in their country or a picture of a custom that is meaningful to them. Anything they want to bring.  We can use these to learn new vocabulary specific to their pictures and to review vocabulary.

This can be used to create a class cultural CV using Voice thread.  Students can find a poem or a short piece of writing in their own language which is meaningful to them and use their image and their poem to create a Voicethred slide. Their comment about the picture can be added in English in a form of a voice or video message. They can work on this assignment in class or at home. I can also give them the opportunity to present their work in class.

Other students and parents can leave comments on their pages. This can be used as a homework assignment. I could provide students with some comment starters so that they can give supportive and kind feedback to each other. Out of all their presentations we can create a class Voicethread.

This project can be used as a CV of your class and give your class some visibility in the school. It can be viewed by other students and parents. This allows the student to share a bit of their culture and to use their language (which can be appreciated by everyone but especially by those in the class or school who share their L1).

As an alternative you can have students write scaffolded poems about themselves and read these over their own picture.

The written material submitted with the Voicethread  can be used to  create word clouds using Wordl or Tagxido. Each individual student   can create one for themselves and bring it to class or a teacher can crate them all and present them as a surprise. These word clouds can be posted around the classroom. Students would have to guess which word cloud belongs to which student and tell the class why they believe it to be so. They can also use the word clouds to introduce other students to practice verbs in third person. This this can be used as a review of the content as well as grammar.

I like it because it presents a creative way to represent students’ writing. Students can use it to speak about each other. They can use the cloud a a reminder of vocabulary they will need to present their friends. Again it takes away the edge, so they can mainly focus on using the right grammar and not on remembering vocabulary.

Here are a couple of the wordclouds created from our blogs. Can you guess who they belong to?

During the cooking part of the unit we practice measurements and expressions for a bottle of, a kilo of, a can of, names of utensils, cooking processes like baking, stirring, beating and so on. We usually cook something in class and talk through it. We can extend this by making a film or taking pictures of different stages of the process. I can post the video or the slide show on Voice thread and have student make their own comments explaining what is happening on each picture using either present progressive tense or simple past tense.

Here is an example of a similar voicethread.

Alternatively I can have them focus more on writing. Students can work in groups of 2 or three. They can write their own recipes or interesting posts about their favorite foods and post them with commentaries, images or video using Glogster.com.

This is just an example of a random glog. Students can use it to upload pictures and video of their cooking experience and add written comments on it.

Or if students don’t want to bother with too much graphics they can use Penzu to write out the recipe and the directions and attach photos to show the progress of the operation. To help those that need more help I can send a Penzu post with prompts. I think it would give the kids a choice of presenting their work in different way.

What I like about all these tools is that they provide visually stimulating environment which is interactive, cooperative and easy to use. It makes their work accessible to parents which is especially important for ESL students. It gives them the control and the ability to come up with creative content. It provide for avenues to give encouragement and positive feedback. And just by using these tools students learn how to use English in the process of discovering computer tools. I hope that I will get to use the tools that I have talked about in this post as well as others presented by my fellow students.

Thanks for a great course.

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Yesterday was a good class. Everyone worked very hard on trying to find Web 2.0 tools useful for educational or organizational purposes. I am looking forward to browsing through the blogs. I liked some organizational tool for students and teachers. I really liked time lines. The presentation was great and I would like to find ways to use that tool. I am sure I can use it with my ESL students to do some interdisciplinary units. Any of these tool are great because they push ESL students to use the language in the process of using the tools as well as in the context of the topics. I love it.

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In its own words Voicethread is a tool for having conversations around media. By media I mean pictures, presentations, videos and documents. Voicethread is great for ESL and language teachers and students who use to work with writing, speaking and listening. By using this tool you can create an image or video based activity for your students. They will be able to look at one or several images and leave written or spoken comments. Or they can comment on a video using a video or doodling feature.

Registration is very easy.  First go to the website and do so. Just type in your name, provide password and email address and you are in.

Once you are registered you can start creating. You can upload a picture or a video from your computer, enter a URL or take a picture or a short video from your webcam.

If you go to the creative commons section on Flickr you can use their images as long as you attribute the source. Open the picture you have selected. If you right click the picture you like you can copy the location of the picture and feed it into the URL slot in the Voicethread uploader.

Here is a short video I have recorded. I have added an assignment  for the students through writing a comment.

You can make this link public or you can share it via email with you students as an assignment.You can also embed it on your blog or website. When someone has commented on you video you will be notified via email. This feature can be turned on and off by going into your personal folder, clicking on your email address in the top right corner and going to My accounts and then Notifications.

You can also chose who can view your post, weather they can comment on it, and who can see the comments. To do that you need to open your post click on the same menu button on the top left corner of you post, click edit and then go to the bottom of your screen to the publishing options.

From there you will be able to chose and save your options.

Students can upload their own videos, maps or pictures (up to 50)  and leave written, spoken or video comments. It  is very easy to do. To embed just click on the little wheel in the left upper corner. and to comment go to a comment button above the play feature. ti will give you a choice of recording your voice, writing a comment or recording a video. If you live in US or Canada you cal also respond by phone.

If they are leaving a video comment they can also use a doodling feature which I like. You can also use it in class to emphasize something in a video. Students can us it while presenting their material to stop the video and point things out. Here is a little tutorial on how to use it.

Depending on the level of the students you can request that students either write comments, leave spontaneous comments, write their comments first and then record them. This can be a good way for them to be forced to speak but take away the anxiety of a face to face conversation and give them time to practice on their own before recording themselves.

This can be used a good self assessment tool where students make spoken comments and then analyze their speech patterns.

Here is an example of an individual student’s work. Her peers and teacher have left comments on her post. What I really like about it is that students can get a “live” spoken response to their posts and lots of positive reinforcement. And even with one student’s work a whole class can participate.

Voicethread provides some great ideas on how to use it in education. It has been used in ESL, foreign languages, information technology, science, math, social studies. IT has been successfully used in higher education a business. To find all of their great ideas and users describing their experience click here. And those of you in school admin might appreciate that it also has a  Moodle embedding module.

What I like about the tool is that is it fuss free. Everything is organized in a very user friendly way. They give you a bunch of tutorials on using their own tools. You can find it in your folder called “My Voice”. It is very visual, truly interactive and is great for collaborative projects in any subject area.

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Today I have had an anxiety rollercoaster day. One minute I knew what I was supposed to do another I doubted it. I’ll try to get some good sleep tonight and see if it helps in the morning.

I spent a lot of the time researching the Web 2.0 resources for ESL. I found a great blog that recommends some of them. It helped me to orient myself a bit and see what other people are using. It also helped me to limit my choices. It is so overwhelming I feel like I have to start small. It I know how to use three tools that is more than enough to get me going. Some of the things that were recommended have changed since the blog was written so it took some sorting time. I think I will start with something simple like an online diary writer, something I feel comfortable using at first and something that will be super easy for my students to use as well. I am also thinking about choosing something for listening and speaking activities and something for reading and vocab. I guess that should give a set of tools that cover all four modes of language.

Most of the talk about software and some about excel (mainly because it was doing strange things) went over my head today. My mind has this remarkable function to shut itself down when I can’t follow things. Everything just becomes background noise.  Sorry, Craig. It is not you, it is me. I think I need my coffee intake.

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Well, I am officially really tired now.  I think because we are getting so much information and because I am trying to get my head around all the assignments. But I am plugging along. It is generally good.

What I really appreciated today was going over the blogging again. We have all had experience with it now and ran into problems. So we spent a bit of time troubleshooting. It was good to work with real problems and learn how to fix them. I felt confident and now feel that I can actually may be possibly someday master the blogging. No, really. I will. What makes it really worth it is the fact that it is a great communication tool and it is pretty easy to do if you know the right sources and how to cut and paste

The storytelling tools were awesome today as well. Here are a few links. Check them out. Storybird, Tikatok, Zooburst. These are tool for making storybooks. Kids and adults can both get a kick out of them. Just to think that these really fun things have an educational value! Not the education I got.

Whenever I see things like that I like to think about what my life would’ve been like if all these things were available to me when I was a child.  I loved school when I was little. I just generally love learning (although it seems that I only like learning for the sake of learning). But if my learning was in the context of Web 2.0 I am pretty sure I would have been much better at critical thinking and expressing myself, I wouldn’t have been too afraid to speak and voice my own opinions and maybe I would have grown up being a lot more confident  than I am.   Oh well, I have a chance to offer these opportunities to students who are still going through their formative years. What an opportunity to teach them in an interactive, collaborative environment and be able to use all these tools on the web to help them build skills, confidence, give them instant positive feedback, have peers give positive feedback.   I like where the education is moving these days.

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