PODCASTS FOR ELT

You may find Podcast on the web or create your own to use in class. They are audio or visual content automatically delivered over a network via free subscription.

In Podomatic Elt training videos you may see some practical tips and create your own on Audioboo,

 iTunes and Podomatic.

Audioboo allows you to record up to five minutes or to upload audio material that you may use on WebPages. You have to sign it and it’s free.

In iTunes almost is for free and you can get loads of material on any subject that you are interested in, some in video. These materials are automatically updated when you connect the web.

In Podomatic you may create a website for yourself and you may record (the time you need) or import an audio file.

For Podcast examples you may browse BBC Audio Bank.

You have to log in or register and allows you to print the material or have it online.

There are also Podcasts by students of different levels and places. For instance the Samba EFL gets students to experiment on it.

SEARCHING THE WEB

The twelfth session provided us a very enriching battery of tools and some advice on how to search on the web as well as different   search engines including “The first Portuguese Webquest search engine Kplaces to improve our teaching-learning process.

WEBQUEST

On the same session (twelfth) we contacted with webquests.

A webquest is “A structure approach to enable students to spend time using the web, bringing different pieces of information together and combining them in new ways, using their creativity and problem-solving skills, instead of wasting time looking for something without guidance.”

They are made up of a number of standard building blocks: Introduction; Task; Process; Evaluation and Conclusion.

To build blocks for webquests you may Click here!

There are a large number of websites where you may see some examples like Education world. Here you may find important information in a lot of issues interesting for older students.

The web also provides resources for webquests to search, create and share Webquests. 

MOVIES AND VIDEOS

Since we are teachers, we decided to go into the video website for kids “PBS Kids”

The site is very attractive and colorful and it has a hyperlink containing stuff for teachers and parents full of activities related to the big ideas/ Ideas to grow on. There are also free trials for learning and fun as well as pintables for kids.

Still in the kids section, but after having visited “Lean English Kids”, we found this website highly resourceful for kids as it includes songs, jokes, language games, stories, word of the week. It requires membership and people can add comments to the site. Parents are invited to sign up to get their newsletter. Parents also find info here on how to help their children to learn English; teachers can find ways of how to use “Learn English Kids” in the classroom and kids can help their lil brothers or sisters learn English.

Another website that we have decided to pay a visit was “School clipart”, from where one can download free school clipart graphics from a huge amount of free clipart categories.

Our suggestion to teach and discuss the topic “pollution” for the secondary level goes for the video “The Earth song” by Michael Jackson.

LANGUAGES IN GENERAL

BBC-Languages : It presents audio and video courses in several languages; courses for beginners; teacher’s homepage and debates. People can also learn the UK languages here. It contains a dictionary, websites for beginners, intermediate and advanced learners. In the folder “schools”, subjects are divided into primary and secondary. There are games, video clips and activities for homework and revision for school students, resources for teachers and parents as well as online learning, support and advice.

BLOGS

Please visit ours, they are more innovative!

Skills and resourceful materials for songs and lyrics

Songfacts.com is a website where you can browse songs by title or by artist, there's a “top ten songs”, the music history event of the day and song analysis.

A-Z Lyrics: In this website, teachers and learners can request, submit and correct lyrics, browse by soundtrack, artist or song and send it to one's cell phone. One can request and add videos and it has links to Facebook and top and general lyrics websites plus artists and bands.

READING

Short Stories: This website presents several types of stories including: children's; crime; fiction; horror; humour; nonfiction; romance; sci-fi and interactive short stories.

You can browse the library by genre or search it for a title, author or keyword. Clicking on an author's name lists all their stories along with further information and links. Stories can be read online, printed or downloaded for reading offline or on handheld devices.

It also includes: story of the day; word games; story guides and even Chinese book for children.

GAMES, CROSSWORDS AND PUZZLES

Easy Test Maker: This website provides an easy way for teachers to make their tests. With Easy Test Maker you can create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, matching, short answer and true and false questions all on the same test. You can also insert instructions and divide your test into multiple sections. The registration is free.

Your Dictionary:   This funny website is cool for game lovers. It offers a variety of crossword puzzles, such as anagram puzzles, cryptic puzzles, Roman and Arabic numeral puzzles, study puzzles for geography, physics, astronomy, Spanish and the Bible, puzzles with holiday messages, with graphics and web links. There are also crossword puzzles for kids, encrypted word puzzles and a fill-in crossword puzzles. There are also free printable word puzzles.

CULTURAL INFO

Project Britain: Here you find almost everything about British life and Culture. The website contains fascinating facts and information about England, Scotland and Wales (Britain), in a way that is easy to read and to understand for people of all ages and cultures. It includes customs and traditions; food and drink; tourist info; sports and leisure; history, etc.

The “Facts of the Day Calendar” contains a short article about why the day is special, a historic event, custom, tradition, famous person or interesting facts related to the date contains a short article about why the day is special, a historic event, custom, tradition, famous person or interesting facts related to the date.

We British: This website presents the essence of being British and how difficult it is to define what makes someone British. It gives info about British achievements, British personalities, history, monarchy,  prime ministers and British cities among others, inviting us to put down in no more than 150 words what it means for us to be British.

MULTIMEDIA RESOURCES

On today’s session (11th), we were shown varied and helpful resources for teaching English.

The categories are the following:

§  Grammar and vocabulary§  Writing resources§  Listening resources
§  Pronunciation§  Song and lyrics§  Reading§  Games, crosswords and quizzes§  Cultural facts§  Movies and videos§ Kids§  Languages in general§  List of even more resources§  Blogs

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY

On the grammar and vocabulary section we can find:

The activities of ESL/EFL learners website, where one can fulfill tasks in English and in many other languages (monolingual and bilingual)

We have grammar and vocabulary quizzes.

It doesn´t require any subscription and the activities are organized by levels of difficulty.

The grammar net website is designed by students and its materials are photocopiable and downloadable for free. We can copy the worksheets, use the materials and it has got many explanations about the exercises. Students or anyone else can check their own work and score.

WRITING RESOURCES

Purdue University Online Writing Lab: We found the website very professional; when we go through it we see that it provides us resources for students according to their grades; for professional writers and parents as well.

The National Writing Project website emphasizes the importance of writing and provides many ideas for teaching writing.

LISTENING RESOURCES

BBC Education is our favourite because it´s highly resourceful and fully varied in materials and ideas. It’s also a very reliable website containing trustworthy information.

In the “English meeting website” the students can read, listen and watch videos at the same time and practise the main skills.

PRONUNCIATION

Back to BBC! Here one finds the sounds of English, the similarity of the sounds, spelling and quizzes for foreigners. It also contains free videos, recordings and quizzes to help learners practice English pronunciation.

English Club.com  - here you have forums for pronunciation; phonetics, word stress, homophones, English phonetic spelling and even a phonetic chart!

RESOURCE DIRECTORIES

We were asked to critically analyze a group of six resource directories:

1.                   EverythingESL: Its use is free and it’s got:

·         Lesson plans with activities for free download and books related to the topic plans that we may buy;

·         Teaching tips where we can access 59inservice ideas and strategies for ELS and mainstream educators;

·         Resource Picks with recommendations on materials and resources for classroom.

2.                  Free Printables for Teacher:  

There are several materials that you can use or download for free like: flashcards, worksheets, videos, games, projects and coloring on different items. These materials are divided according to the students’ level and they are in different languages.

You may also use Forums.

3.                  ILC online index:

It presents online resources dived into in levels and colors: Beginner (white); Elementary (yellow); Low intermediate (green); Intermediate (blue); Upper Intermediate (orange); and Advanced (red). Each one these levels includes English, Math, Computer and Information Literacy.

Concerning English, for all skills and grammar, it’s got printable activities, online activities and web links.

All is free.

4.                  Learning Page:

To use it you need registration and become a member is free.

Learning page has free teaching resources as Basic Sheets, Theme Sheets and Clip Art that you may download or print. It also has helpful sites for reading, writing, Raz-kids, vocabulary and Reading-Tutors and a blog.

5.                  Library of Congress – The Teacher Page:

Its use is free. Everyone can subscribe to regular updates from the Library of Congress.

In teachers’ page you have: Lesson Plans organized by topic, by era, or by alphabetical order according to the students’ age; Themed resources; Primary sources sets; Presentations and activities; Collection connections.

The materials of these items can be print.

6.                  Linguistics-ELS: it’s a free resource.

In teachers’ page you may access the following resources: News and journals; Content-based; Assessment; Bilingual Education; Lesson Plans; Organizations; Research; Employment and Technology.

To use with students you have resources of all skills, grammar, vocabulary, web quests, activities and quizzes and language tests.

JOURNALS AND MAGAZINES

  - London Metropolitan University – It contains an alphabetical list of education journals. This website offers courses for undergraduate; Post-graduate; pre-degree; professional and short courses; English and foreign languages. There’s an intranet for students and staff. We searched info about the postgraduate courses that this Uni. offers: an MA in education, for instance. It contains info about the course location, the aims of the course; duration and attendance; the dates/timetable; course structure presenting the optional modules for the MA Education; assessment; dissertation; career opportunities, fees; entry requirements; accommodation, how to apply and contacts. It looks very professional and it offers a wide range of courses and degrees.

Another website that we have found interesting is the “Teaching English”.  It requires registration; the homepage looks quite professional, one can try their free teaching materials, see their most popular downloads, subscribe to their newsletter, visit the editor´s choice blogs, participate in forum topics and read recent comments. It is possible to watch seminars online. It has links to Twitter, Facebook, RSS and e-Newsletter. There are orange headers with activities, lesson plans, tips, teaching kids, BritLit, links and quizzes. It is divided into homepage, Try, Think, Train, Talk, Transform, About us and Help. It is a very resourceful site with materials for kids and grown-ups.

TEACHERS’ ASSOCIATIONS

In the beginning of the tenth session we visited some Teachers’ Associations:

APPI - Its homepage provides information about news, official and non-official training. To access the resources of APPInep you need log in and the resources of classroom are not available.

As official documents it’s got the programs of 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and secondary levels; “competências essenciais do ensino básico” and European Languages Portfolio.

APPI should invest in resources for teachers and learners.

JALT - It’s a Japanese Association for language teaching and is organized by terms: Information, Community, Membership; Groups, Events and Contact. Its language is multilingual and the members can follow it in Twitter and Facebook and participate in Forums.

To use this Association you have to be a member.

Association For Language Learning  - Its homepage is appealing but its use requires a subscription. It’s got material for teachers in several languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Russian.

In the category “Publications” you find Languages Today; Journals, Advertising and Curriculum.

The readers and those who are interested in learning and teaching languages can submit articles.

JOB FINDERS - For those who are looking for jobs we browsed through websites where they may get information about jobs and receive further information in personal e-mail.

NEWSPAPERS

On the sixth session, we analyzed some newspapers and one of our favorites was the American: The New York Times. It gives the possibility to create an account, it links straight to Facebook ,Twitter and the weather forecast;  it provides the latest world news and it is divided into several topic areas: world; business day; opinion; U.S., technology, arts; politics; sports; movies; N.Y./region; obituaries; theater;  science; travel; television; health; home& garden; books; real estate; fashion & style; week in review; automobiles; magazine and T magazine. It also contains recent blog posts It´s a very high-quality newspaper.

The British “The Telegraph” is more or less of the kind. It’s a serious and reliable newspaper with the latest news on the hot topics. There´s a folder for comments and “Telegraph blogs”: Politics, news, sport, finance, culture and technology. It also has the columnists’ opinions on varied subjects, blogs, cartoons and moderation FAQ as well as classified advertising on courses, jobs and services.

ELECTRONIC EUROPEAN LANGUAGE PORTFOLIO

On the second session (21^st February), we analyzed the Electronic European Language Portfolio, which is based on the guidelines of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. In the educational field, it can help teachers plan teaching and learning, visualize ones progress and discern which methodology suits the students/learners the best, thus potentiating language learners’ autonomy and motivating people to continue learning languages throughout life. The e- ELP is divided into the same three parts as the European Language Portfolio: Language Biography, Dossier and Language Passport. 

It is a useful digital document for learners of foreign languages, since language learning and teaching are key elements towards European integration and mobility. It justifies the need for the European citizen to have a personal document describing all his/her linguistic experiences and certifications. It can be applied to students since portfolios can provide teachers with information upon which to base decisions and to evaluate students’ progress. Finally, it can serve as a means of motivating students and promoting their self-evaluation. 

PUBLISHERS

On the fifth session the teacher trainer took us through some Publishers: Cambridge; Express Publishing; Heinemann; Longman; Pierson; Macmillan and Oxford.

We focused our attention on Longman English Language Teaching

It’s a free website with plenty of resources for teachers as for students as well. Its homepage is appealing, colorful and interactive.

It offers a great variety of lesson plans depending on your needs and students’ levels. These ones are organized in terms of low/ upper, beginners, intermediate or secondary.

You can also be offered a wide menu of Games, Quizzes, and Crosswords with answers keys, Puzzles, questionnaires and appealing interactive activities.

In Resources Archive you can find more lesson plans depending on the objective and the skills one wants to develop as well as activities focused on specific topics, grammar and vocabulary items also according to the students’ level.

Teaching tips archive containing lessons ideas and teaching tips to teach mixed ability classes to encourage students do their homework and enjoy it.

It also has fun on line activities for students as well as online activity archive which is free for download like all support activities.

To experiment some material we selected “Cooking Verbs”. It’s an interactive activity on food vocabulary for lower secondary students. The level of difficulty increases as you go through the exercises.

Depending on the selected topic or on the grammar item the teacher wants to teach, the website can be used with students on a regular basis, along to the large variety of activities. 

The link for the teens chat community is not working.

Dictionaries

We have analysed the Cambridge, Longman and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
All these dictionaries are extremely resourceful tools for classroom usage. After having analysed the following links, we have checked that they are all subscription-free and have the following features in common:

• Audio pronunciation
• Phonetic transcription
• Word definition
• Sentence examples
• Related words
• Word of the day
• Puzzles and games
• New words
• Links to encyclopedias

We have filled the dictionary checklist, which you can find in the following link.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24105777/dictionarychecklist.docx

MULTIMEDIA

On our first session, we presented a personal definition of multimedia and then we saw different definitions from various websites. According to Vaughan (1993), multimedia is: “any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation and video that is delivered by computer. When you allow the user (…) to control what and when these elements are delivered, it is interactive multimedia. When you provide a structure of linked elements through which the user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia.” (Vaughan, 1993)

As far as technology is concerned, we saw the differences between traditional and modern technology as well as their advantages and disadvantages in the classroom.

We invite you to watch how technology in the classroom evolved throughout the years: