EFL Geek 3.0 - ESL & EFL in Korea

Random Quote

Technology will not replace teachers...teachers who use technology will
probably replace teachers who do not.
---- Ray Clifford

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett

it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
---- Thomas A. Edison

No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
---- Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi

A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
---- anonymous

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
---- Malcom Forbes

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
---- Robert Frost

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
---- Evan Esar

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin

Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
---- H. G. Wells

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei

The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995

Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)

This may be the most interesting blog theme I've ever seen. http://eflgeek.com/index.php Definitely in my top 5 at least.
---- Steve Dembo

Web 2.0

My latest article for the Korea Herald is now out and it is on web 2.0 in the classroom. Read it at the Korea Herald site or look in the extended entry.

Hope you find it useful. I know there are many many more sites that could be introduced but due to space constraints I had to limit myself.

My Last Column

This is also my final column for the Korea Herald. I notified my editor when I submited this lasted column. I’m just too busy to continue writing this column. I’ll be watching the Expat Living section to see who my replacement is and I’m sure I’ll be linking to it in the future.

Korea Herald Readers

Welcome. Feel free to comment and leave your thoughts on this weeks column. If you would like to learn more about me visit my bio page. I have also been blogging at this site for 4 years so there are a lot of entries if you care to look through the archives. Some of my favorite or more popular entries are available on the classic entries page.

What does web 2.0 offer the language teacher? Your first thoughts will probably be of sites like YouTube (http://youtube.com) and Flickr (http://flickr.com), but web 2.0 is much more than that. Using web 2.0 applications and web sites will allow you to extend your lesson beyond the walls of the classroom and give learners the tools they need to continue learning on their own.

Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) is receiving a lot of attention from language teachers due to the high level of interaction between participants. There are several groups of teachers involved in promoting Second Life in language teaching. One of these is Second Life English (http://www.esl-secondlife.blogspot.com/). Using second life you could bring classroom roleplays to a whole new level. This may be difficult for some teachers to implement due resource requirements such as computer labs, but it is worth a look.

Chinswing (http://www.chinswing.com/) offers more structure than second life and provides learners with an opportunity for listening and speaking that is a little more controlled. Essentially Chinswing is a message board where you record your voice and listen to other people talk. Instead of reading threads you listen to them. The site is organized into channels allowing learners to more easily find discussions of interest to them. With this site, you could have a thread devoted to your class where students talk about an assigned topic and respond to each other. Another simple assignment would be to have students choose their own discussion and participate in it and share the link for homework.

I have used Bubbleply (http://www.bubbleply.com) with students. This a great way for students to interact with a video on YouTube. Last September I introduced Bubbleply on my blog (http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/bubbleply-revisited/)
Bubbleply takes a youtube video and allows you to add a variety of speech, thought, narration, or subtitle bubbles to it. Clearly this gives the teacher opportunities to annotate a video, add English subtitles to aid in listening comprehension, add thought bubbles for comedy or even have students find a video of their own to bubblply for task based English use. My students will be finding their own youtube video to bubbleply and then adding it to their class blogs.

Kantalk (http://kantalk.com/) requires the use of Skype (http://www.skype.com) for recording voice or actual live chatting. One feature that I think is useful is the transcribe a youtube video option. Simply add a link to a YouTube video and the video will be embedded on the page with a place to transcribe the video. More than one person may transcribe the video and other users are able to comment as well as rate the transcription. This is definitely a good listening exercise for learners.
Last semester I used BitStrips (http://www.bitstrips.com/create/comic/) as a make-up homework assignment (http://eflgeek.com/index.php/eflgeek/comments/bitstrips/) for one student and will probably use it with all students this semester.

FaceYourManga () is an avatar generator. Using this site you could have learners create avatars of themselves, print them up and bring them to class. You can then redistribute the avatars so that learners have to find the person whose picture they have using language learned in class. This is also useful if your students are blogging or using Moodle and you want them to have avatars.

There are too many web2.0 sites to use with classes to be able to fully introduce all of them here, but others to consider include: Voice Thread (http://voicethread.com), Flickr (http://flickr.com), Chuala (http://www.chuala.com/), Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus (http://www.visualthesaurus.com/), and Word Learner (http://www.wordlearner.com/).

Two excellent blogs that will keep you informed of useful web sites for the classroom are Larry Ferlazzos Websites of the Day (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/) in particular check out The “Next Best…” List (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/08/25/the-next-the-best-list/). The second site to watch is Langwitches (http://langwitches.org/blog/).

If you have other sites to share, please leave a comment on my blog (http://eflgeek.com).

Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Sep 4, 2008 at 07:59 PM
Teaching | KH Column | useful_web_sites |

Learn That Language Now wrote 54 words on Friday Sep 5, 2008 at 05:11 PM

Hi, great language blog you have here! Would you be interested in doing a link exchange? Just send me an e-mail with your URL and I’ll add your link to my blog. You can add my link as “Learn That Language Now”. I look forward to reading more blog entries from you. Thanks!

-Robbie