Alternatives to YouTube and how to use them.

You can find million and millions of videos to consume in YouTube for consumtion either in or out of the classroom. The sites featured here contain videos intended for more educational use than the funny videos in YouTube. However, there are educational channels aor universities channels quite interesting and I will try to cover them in the future.

Why to use Videos?
 The answer is simple: To stimulate your students' brains. If you have the appropriate equipment for showing videos can be a part of a warm up activity or an excellent source of information or even the prompt to start a conversation.

TeacherTube


Good site specially designed for teachers. Contains loads of educational videos and also some interesting resources such as lesson plans. Here is an example of a video and how to use it in the classroom:

Fashion



Last year I had to teach a unit about fashion in B1 level. In the course book there were activities for all skills and the last activity of the unit is always the writing and speaking activities. The text about fashion at the beginning of the unit was a bit blunt. The classroom had an IWB so what I did was to show students a video like this in order to stimulate them and motivate them to take part in the speaking activity first and then come up with some ideas for the brainstorming pre-writing part of the writing task.



BBC learning zone

BBC's educational portal is extremely good and full of ideas. Although it is mainly attended to native speakers it is ideal for a CLIL(Content and Language Integrated Learning) context. One of the benefits of using BBCs videos in language teaching is that it is an authentic material specially designed for learning. Well, I won't write more, go and check it out yourselves.Here is a video about the climate change:

Learning chocolate- A ''tasty'' picture dictionary.

http://www.learningchocolate.com/node/350?st_lang=en

Computers 1 | Learning Chocolate

This Website presents words in groups using some interesting pictures as a visual aid in order to memorise vocabulary.
Special features:

• You can listen the word(good for racticing pronounciation)
• There is a bunch of exercises useful for further consolidation.

Why is this useful?
As most of us did we learn by seeing. And the fact that they are grouped makes the site interestingly useful.

In the language classroom?

 I would use it in presenting a group of vocabulary with an interactive white board.


Limitations
The vocabulary list is a bit limited and the exercises are unimaginative and a bit blunt.

''Have your head in the (word) clouds'':Wordle, Wordsift and Tagxedo

There are many tools for creating word (or tag) clouds out there but these three here drew my attention.The first one is simple, the second is fancier and the third is more artistic. Creating word clouds is quite simple as it require the basic skills in digital literacy of copying and pasting(you all know them). Copy any text and paste it to the necessary field. The application will automatically generate a beautiful word cloud for you.

http://www.wordsift.com/

Here is a word cloud created using Wordsift. Can you guess  what is the text about? Read the whole text here.

If you observe carefully the words are sorted alphabetically. You can chenge that and sorted them in different ways. The size of the words indicates the frequency in the text. I have a feeling that most of you guessed right!

Here is the same text using Wordle

Impressive layout and many options to change it and pick whatever you like.Change the colour, the font, sort the words vertically, horizontally or both! Print it and give it to your students! They would love a hand out like that.

Taratata!! The third dish in this three-course meal is Tagxeedo. As you realised it is my favourite and that's why:

Here you can shape your word cloud in any shape you want by just uploading a picture. I uploaded a picture of Parthenon. And I used a larger text from Wikipedia.

Use it in the language classroom. 

Wordcloud are ideal for warming up activities. Here are two examples having in mind intermediate and upper-intermediate learners.You can adapt this activities making them appropriate to the level you teach. If you have any good ideas don't forget to send them in the comment area!

• Pre-reading activity:

1.  Create a wordcloud with the help of one of the tools above using the text to be teached. 
2. Print it and distribute the handout to your learners.
3. Ask them what is the text about letting them discuss your question in pairs first.(Speaking/ communicative skills practice)
4. Explain some of the unknown words (not all of them!) -Pick the key words or those that are difficult to understand their meaning from the context.
5. Then let them skim the text and carry on with deeper comprehension questions. 
6. Keeping notes on the word cloud should be encouraged!

Tips: This could be a pairwork activity which in my opinion is better to promote collaboration and negotiation of meaning.

• Writing activity 

Wordclouds can be used for brainstorming. So if you want to brainstorm your learners about environmental issues

1. wordcloud an appropriate text.
2. Print and handout.
3. Discuss and add ideas.
4. Let the learners write short sentences using words from the cloud.
5. Expand this activity by letting them create a paragraph or an essay.

Limitations

The main drawback is that the word cloud is generate by a computer-programme and you might have words that you don't like them or don't need them. In Wordle you can delete them but still you need to be careful what words are in your cloud!

Enjoy teaching with the clouds !

Prezi: My "Prezious" Presentations

Prezi homepage

What's this?

This is a web-based presentation tool that differs a lot from the traditional powerpoint. Instead of a series of slides a single canvas that can include text, video, charts or whatever a presentation usually includes. The unique feature of zooming in and creating a path of storytelling make boring presentations to be unpredictible and fun!

Presentations?

Presentation is an essential part of lesson planning. In language teaching presentation of grammar requires use of charts and presenting examples on the board, or in teaching writing presenting a topic. Therefore, a tool like that would be extremely useful for a teacher who uses e-presentations.

Why Prezi?

Prezi presentations are fun because everything is there. The teacher just zooms in and out showing the learners the big picture or particular elements of the presented theme. This spatial diversity in presentation helps the learner to classify the newly acquired information.

How can be used in language classroom?

You can try create your own lesson... Include pictures or videos, zoom in and out... It is as fun as playing a game both for the teacher and the learner. It is motivating, learners would be interested to create their own presentations. Use it in an activity or a project. For example, a vocabulary activity would be to write on the canvas a group of words and then let learners zoom in and out, add some synonyms or their definitions. Create a path and boom! Everything is right there on a single surface everything is on the same page not in a series of slides. The interface is so user- friendly that you will enjoy making changes in your draft all the time. There is a bunch of tutorials on the site useful both for technophobics and technofreaks.

Limitations

An interactive whiteboard or a projector is necessary. A decent internet speed is also important but not necessary because you can still perfom your presentations in the offline mode of your browser. The most serious drawback would be to create a bad presentation and bad means a presentation that would make learners dizzy because it's too complicated. I wouldn't suggest to let your students create their presentations in classroom because they might get distracted with the unlimited creative potential.

How much is it gonna cost me?

The basic version is FREE,you have to pay for the professional version. The Enjoy version which I use at the moment is FREE for people who have a professional e-mail provided by educational institution. I am completely satisfied with the Enjoy version. See here for more details.

Have fun!