Breaking News English
We started the class by having a look at a website created by Sean Balville. It is BreakingNewsEnglish.com. Now many of you may know it because it is linked and shared a lot around.
Now, the site is not really appealing to the eye but it's got tons of content and what's even more important, it offers a variety of activities built around a single article. For this reason it represents a powerful resource if you want to get your students working with authentic material and a great way to blend your classes. Students can do text reconstruction exercises like sentence jumble, text match, spelling activities like listen and spell, or vocabulary exercises (flashcards, cloze etc.). I could go on and on for ages but I think it's better if you have a look yourself, so here's the link.
Now, the site is not really appealing to the eye but it's got tons of content and what's even more important, it offers a variety of activities built around a single article. For this reason it represents a powerful resource if you want to get your students working with authentic material and a great way to blend your classes. Students can do text reconstruction exercises like sentence jumble, text match, spelling activities like listen and spell, or vocabulary exercises (flashcards, cloze etc.). I could go on and on for ages but I think it's better if you have a look yourself, so here's the link.
Blogger
After that we looked at blogging. We focused on a free tool called Blogger, which is a tool provided by Google. You can make as many blogs as you want and it's free.
Now the reason this technology is relevant in EFL is that blogger represent a very affordable and flexible repository for all the content you produce online. Imagine you create a quiz or there's a video, a podcast, an assignment and you want your students to find it quickly? Do they have to browse the internet forever? No. Put it all there.
Now the reason this technology is relevant in EFL is that blogger represent a very affordable and flexible repository for all the content you produce online. Imagine you create a quiz or there's a video, a podcast, an assignment and you want your students to find it quickly? Do they have to browse the internet forever? No. Put it all there.
Blogger is a great recipient and it's extremely flexible and easy to navigate. Imagine you tell all your students to create a podcast: where do they share the links? Blogger. Imagine you give your students the task to create a google doc, a video on youtube, a screencast... where can you easily collect this data? Blogger of course! Does it have to be you? Not necessarily. You can get your students build their class blog a work on it! Engaging, funny, motivating. What more could you want?
If you're still moving your first steps, Russel created a very useful intro to Blogger which is available here:
If you're you're already familiar with the basics and you want to get funky, here's something for you as well:
Cheers.
Thank you for your support. Please check my new posts.
ReplyDeleteKeep in touch. GF.