Blogs, Wikis and Forums - Training on 2 July 2008

Just to summarise yesterday's training. We examined the pros and cons of using Blogs, Wikis or Forums in order, among other things, to create communities of learners among our students.

Why use blogs or Wikis?

1. to give students a chance to express themselves in English to each other / the teacher/ another class/ an online audience

2. to provide students with extra-class support such as details of/ links to class work and homework

3. to provide students with some additional online tasks to do in or out of class

4. as a means of internal communication amongst colleagues – e.g. sharing INSETT sessions/ interesting articles

Which should I use - Blog or Wiki?

Use a Blog to send out information and attract reactions to it in the form of comments. A "tutor" blog in which the teacher gives extra support to students is a good example of this. See The Rome EFL Blog.

Use a Wiki to encourage collaborative writing, in which a single text can be edited by many people. The teacher can intervene at any stage in the process. See "English for Engineering, Kuwait University", by Buthaina Al-Othman. Choose 'English 123 Spring 2008' in the left-hand column.

Another example, using the 'PbWiki' site at Princeton, is the Book Lovers’ Wiki.

There is some overlap. A Blog 'owner', like a Wiki 'owner', can invite people to become editors and thus add and edit posts (you're reading a post now) instead of merely adding comments. A good example is The British Council Hub, created by Mark Appleby at the British Council Porto.

Fora (forums)
These are more like online notice boards in which messages are organised into threads, with replies displayed in proximity to the original message. All posts in a thread can be visible at once. An example is Mark Appleby’s Hub Forum in Porto. Another example is The Friday Blog, a forum set uplastautumn by a student of mine, Francesca, which has been used to post writing assignments, with the chance of peer reviews by other students.

General features
You should be able to regulate access to a Wiki, Forum or Blog in various ways. You can decide who can edit or create posts, and who can add comments. You can decide whether the blog or Wiki is visible to the public or not, and whether it can be listed by search engines.

How do I create a Blog or Wiki?
Choose the type of site you want to use, and go to its home page:

Blogger: http://www.blogger.com

Wordpress: http://wordpress.com/

Classpress: http://www.classpress.com/

Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/

Pbwiki: http://pbwiki.com/

Lefora: http://www.lefora.com/

Some examples of how Blogs are being used in the British Council:

http://fcemasterclass.blogspot.com

http://web.mac.com/colin.hoy/UI2b/welcome.html

In Porto:

http://studentzone.blogspot.com

In Bilbao, Spain:

http://weseeandenjoy.blogspot.com/

http://lovingbilbao.blogspot.com/

http://fcebritishcouncilbilbao.blogspot.com/

In Barcelona, Spain:

http://encouraginglearnerautonomy.blogspot.com/

I hope all this helps. More for you very soon. Do write a Comment with your reaction.

- Mike

IWB self-training - session notes

Here's a short summary of a workshop we did yesterday, for those who couldn't make it
If you want to learn how to make flipcharts to use on the Interactive Whiteboards in rooms 7, 8 and 10, here's how:
1. Go to this site: http://www.prometheanlearning.co.uk
2. Click on the box labelled "English UK and Rest of World" - below on the left. It is rather difficult to see - a mistake in the page design. Look for the image of Big Ben.
3. To use the free tutorials, you must create an account. Simple: just click on "Create New Account" below the login window.
3. Fill in the onscreen form, inventing a user name and password for yourself and completing the other info. Make sure your e-mail address is correct, as it will be used to send you an account activation code.
4. On logging in, you'll see "My Courses" on the left. Choose "Activstudio Level 1 foundation Skills Course".
5. You'll now be introduced to the first of ten topics. Each topic has up to seven tutorials, each of which often takes no more than a couple of minutes to complete.
6. After topics 2, 5, 7 and 10, you have to take a mini exam. You must get 100 per cent to pass. But if you fail, you can review the topics you failed on, and you can take the tests as often as you like.
7. The whole operation from start to finish may take about three hours.
8. You can do this on any computer but it must have Adobe Flash installed. Otherwise the tutorials won't work. You could do this at home especially if you have ADSL (broadband). In the Council staff room, computers 1 and 6 (counting from the window on the far left) have Flash and you can do the tutorials. The other computers should soon be enabled.
I hope this helps. Ask me if there is anything you don't understand.
Kind regards,
Mike

Websites mentioned in IWB training session

The chicken site is www.miniclip.com and it’s called fowl words.
The site with the youtube clips is www.teflclips.com a
nd the other one was www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/
Also www.lyricsmode.com and google images

IWB Teacher Show and Tell - wed 25th June 08

Hi there,



Below is a very personal, partial summary of the "Show and Tell" session we did yesterday. I hope that it will be useful as a reminder to those who attended, as a reference for those who couldn't and as a springboard to further discussion through this blog. If you do want to agree, disagree, suggest further training etc , please use the comments facility beneath this post. Please also give us your feedback on the sessions and this blog - was the session (blog) useful or not, do we need more sessions like this etc.

How the IWB is being used
The IWB consists of 3 different bits of technology
1.the computer; board (= monitor); pen (=mouse) and the speaker system;
2. the dataprojector and its remote control (which offers a few tricks) and
3. the programme called Activstudio.

It is being used (in order of simplicity of technology involved):
1. As a giant monitor - either using the mouse or the pen to navigate around the screen. It's exactly like working at your desk computer - but using a bigger screen. Teacher can bring up word docs, images, web pages, audio files etc. and all the class can see/hear them. I found this useful to show audioscripts to the class, for example, and it replaces the need for the transparencies or possibly handouts.

2. In conjunction with the remote control of the dataprojector. The remote offers different settings and 3 were mentioned.
2.1 The "No show" button - this blanks the screen so students don't see what is on the computer monitor. Deirdre used this when listening to music videos - so students weren't distracted by the images. The quality of sound was very good from the speakers. Alison used this when opening up a programme e.g. powerpoint - so students only see what the teacher wants them to see. It is a good idea to use No Show when you are not using the IWB for stretches of time - it saves on bulb usage & electricity.
2.2 The "Zoom" - makes the text bigger (or smaller). You get out of Zoom by zooming the other way (i.e. if you pressed "zoom +" you press "zoom -" to return to the original size.
2.3 "Freeze" button - this makes the image on the screen freeze so you can work in the background on the small monitor setting up the next activity. An example is to show a completion activity (on a word doc) which students are asked to do, freeze the image and then start typing the answers in while the students are completing it. To reveal the answers you press "freeze" again and the image is updated to whatever is on the small monitor.

3. In conjunction with Activstudio. Opening up this programme enables you to use the following features even if you do not use a flipchart but are using a word document, for example. I am not going into details here as we are all currently doing the Promethean training (well done Ben and Phil for graduating and aiming even higher with the Advanced certificate! If you want to do this, I sent an email out about who to contact or contact me)
3.1 Spotlight tool - to focus on part of the screen
3.2 Reveal tool - like a blind you can reveal the screen from top to bottom, or left to right.
3.3 annotate over screen - you can obscure words/parts of words/images by "drawing" over them in a colour and easily erase to reveal the entire word/image - we saw that this was good to raise interest in instructions for a game (thanks Ben) or complete a listening activity (thanks Mike) or you can use the pen to write on the screen e.g. as Jenny showed us adding phonetic script.

How can using an IWB help with teaching/learning

• Raises/adds interest - obscuring words/ revealing images etc
• Heads up rather than each student lost in their own book - so teacher can control an activity more - e.g. good for correction of exercises
• Flipcharts offer interactivity - students can come to the board and drag and drop words into a text, for example (good for kinaesthetic learners?)
• Websites can be shown - ready-made materials and it adds fun
• You can quickly find an image to explain vocabulary items
• please use comments to add more ideas!

Thank you to Deirdre, Ben, Jenny and Mike for showing us the kinds of things they have done - I hope you will add the links to the websites you showed us to the comments below.

Further ICT training ideas that came out of the session

1. Using images - uploading your/your students digital images for use
2. Understanding audio - clarifying what is streaming audio, audio file types etc (this may be covered in the Podcast session later on in July)
3. Using the scanner
4. Any other suggestions?

Also the issue of copyright raised its head - I'll get back to you on this.

Alison

The Training Blog for Teachers at the British Council Rome

Hello everybody.

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