Digital storytelling - can it be useful for ESL classes?

Had a great session (back in June) with Betty and Ourania. We compared 2 different tools for creating a digital story: powerpoint vs movie maker*.

Essentially the process is the same for both:

1. create your idea and a short script
2. collect photos and audio files (media)
3. import your media into the program editing area (stage?)
4. add effects or animation, tweak the timing, add credits etc
5. export the movie

In favour of powerpoint: 

• teachers and students are more likely to already know the program
• you can add text to the screen much more easily (a mix of images and text can be useful for language learning)
• you have more options in your animations

In favour of movie maker: 

Let's make the teacher wiki even more useful..

At the group session on 04 July'14, we talked about ways to re-work the staff wiki. 

Teachers at Lalor have put PLENTY of effort into sharing ideas and resources, and these resources are all shared under teacher names. However, when we look for useful ideas & activities, we're more likely to search by theme, certificate module or language skill.

So we thought, let's try collecting resources by theme, and see if that could be more useful. We decided to start with just one theme, and thought that FOOD would be the best place to start.

Suggestion for your collaboration

1) The idea: each teacher gathers 1-3 tasks, activities or resources relating to the theme of FOOD (and 4 other themes - see quiz below)

• share your activities or resources up on the teacher wiki page on food (direct link), 
• in the right level
• with some helpful description for other teachers

Notes from July sessions - from staff wiki to cloud storage

So we had another session during the July break. A huge thanks to the dedicated folk who made it in to share ideas and resources. We talked about useful sites online, how to share resources better, ideas for student and teacher wikis and more. I'll put up some brief notes here.. if you want more details on anything, get in touch or leave a comment.

Great suggestions:

• Use the teacher wiki for sharing resources focussed on a theme, rather than each teacher! We tossed up some themes people have in common, decided to focus on FOOD.. and that's our task for the month. More on this very soon. 
• Wiki: put a link to the staff wiki on the new website, for easy access.

Can you help? people are searching for:

• internet resources focussing on numeracy (Paula)
• video quiz tool (Michael).

Useful sites people have used in the classroom:

Working with images and layout (in microsoft word)

Spent some time last week working with Violeta, who wanted to teach her students about the basics of layout. We started off with putting images on the page. The main issue here of course, is that there are so many different applications, and each has a slightly different way of working with images.

So we chose to look at microsoft word, and the basic way of inserting a photo from the "Insert Menu".

You can insert a photo from within the application, or you can drag the photo across from a file manager (eg windows explorer).

I have followed up with a help file, intended to be easy-to-read. Actually I'm very happy with the file, because it's the first time I've managed to "screen-grab" all those different cursors in word. One of the hardest things to explain is how the cursor changes when you move the mouse. Hopefully this document will help with that.

You can use this with students - let me know how it goes, via the comments below.

• Link to file here (pdf, 1mb).

Use what's already there - if you can find it..

Betty - one of the wonderful teachers at Lalor LLC - spent a fair bit of time creating some activities in powerpoint, that let her students match images with audio. But then she found this website "English Guide" (dot org), and decided it was much better to use resources that someone else had already made.

"They have everything," she exclaimed delightedly. Every theme and topic you could want for low-level English as a second language (ESL) learners.

What a good point this teacher has made! Why spend hours creating learning materials, when there are existing resources out there already?


Please give us some feedback in the comments below - what are the best internet resources you use for teaching ESL?

Exploring online surveys

We had such a great group session in February. I love it when - in spite of the session plan - people make it really clear that they're interested in something different.

From the teacher survey I'd sent around, it seemed that people were most interested in digital storytelling and recording student voices.

So we started the session by looking at this teacher survey, a combination of online form and spreadsheet containing the results. And boom! People were suddenly interested in the possible classroom application of this kind of software.

So the big question is now: how to use online surveys to connect with adult learners in an ESL or literacy classroom?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it

Create a learning activity for your students, involving some kind of online survey.

• Demand as much support as you need, 
• and be ready to tell your colleagues what happened. 

Many questions: from powerpoint to copyright

It was great meeting with Paula because she had so many questions. I've attempted to give a pithy response.. but if something needs more clarity, let me know in the comments below.

• What can we do with powerpoint in teaching and learning?
• For presentation, work with student texts in a way that students work either on the data projector or individually. You can include language and literacy learning activities in the presentation.
• You could work with the whole group of students using a powerpoint on the data projector, and then later put a copy in each student's folder.. so they can work on it individually. 
• A couple of blog posts at the North-West e-mentor blog focus on powerpoint for ESL:
• using powerpoint in the classroom 
• for blended learning just add ingredients..

• What's "the cloud" and how does it work?

• Good question: the cloud is partly for data storage, and partly for running applications. The cloud is kept in data factories all around the world. [More info about the cloud in a previous post.]
  

What is "the cloud" and how does it work?

Good question, thanks Paula. In fact plenty of questions came up the other day as teachers sat around a table at Lalor Living & Learning Centre Inc. We were talking about "cloud computing" - when your data sits on other people's computers.

So what is "The Cloud"? 

Descending Clouds - by Gary Hayes

Essentially it is a move away from storing files and running applications on your local computer. Now you can use data networks in different physical locations to both store files and run applications.

• The cloud is partly for data storage, and partly for running applications. 
• The cloud is kept in data factories all around the world.

Important questions to ask

• Who has permission to view or edit your document? 
• Can you trust the company? 
• What's in that End User License Agreement (EULA) you "signed"?
• Do you still need to backup files on your own local computer?

Issues around the cloud: 

• safety, security, and privacy,
• access and permissions. 

Examples of cloud computing:

• google drive - lets you store and share files as well as running applications in your web browser,
• dropbox lets you store and share files and folders,
• iCloud (apple)

What's the difference between google drive and dropbox?

• An app like dropbox keeps your files synchronised between all your different devices and computers. For example you can share your microsoft word documents with colleagues, or you could make sure you have the same files on your laptop and desktop computer.
• An app like google drive does the same, and also gives you applications for editing these files. Google drive has an "office suite", with word processor, spreadsheet, presentation slides and drawing tools - all within the web browser.
• Microsoft also have their own versions of this, known as "Skydrive" (storage) and "Office 365" (web-based office apps).

More references that could be useful

• Common Craft have some great "how to" videos, including this one on cloud computing. (They used to be free to embed, but now there's membership fees.)
• How do these massive "data centres" run? Google has some intriguing information here: "where the internet lives".]

Photo by Gary Hayes (creative commons at flickr) - BY-NC-SA.