Organising a student exchange using the internet

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It just seems that there is never enough time. However, over the next week I'm going to make a concerted effort to chase up possible student exchange possibilities. I've already signed up one of my older classes with the Dekita.org site with the aim of getting the students to communicate via their blog with other EFL/ESL learner across the globe. Also I want to get my younger students to do some kind of exchange with some Canadian students, courtesy of Excellence and Imagination.

If you want to see some excellent web 2.0 teaching ideas put into practice check out Cool Cat Teacher's latest joint project.

"The Flat Classroom project is a genuine assessment project between Julie Lindsay's grade 11 ITGS class at International School Dhaka(ISD) in Bangladesh and Vicki Davis' 10th grade Computer Science class at Westwood Schools in Camilla, Georgia."

Blade Techno Theme - Director's cut

A new, improved version with extra portions of added weirdness.

Busy

No time for blogging today. Hopefully, I'll get time to write up some new ideas tomorrow.

Teaching through doing

And that means doing things yourself. I asked my FCE class to produce their own music video last night, they're all crazy about music and often we use songs in class (their choice) as part of our listening practice. Now it's time to take it up a notch and get them to produce a video using images from the web. Hopefully, the activity will interest them enough to overcome the technical difficulties they will inevitably face.

As I keep on telling them, they have to learn this kind of stuff on their own as no one else, at least meaning their regular school teachers or parents, have the slightest clue. Unfortunately, as computer/internet access is limited at school, I can't really do much to help either. Still, I will post any effort they care to make.

In the meantime my latest effort.

Rammstein for beginners

I thought I'd share my latest creation. Most of the images are from Hughes Legalise - Batille's Flickr page.

Meebo.com

Once again Cool Cat Teacher has found a great application which I've just put on the blog. Meebo.com has a great little widget that allows you to chat with the readers of your blog.

Making history real

Here's an ideas for a lesson. Why not get students to choose an event in history and make a video based on it using images found on the internet? My video is about the fall of Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), the capital of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. I've been fascinated by the event ever since reading Steven Runciman's excellent book on the subject.

Check out the BBC series, In Our Time which has a radio programme about the siege of Constantinople. Or listen direct by clicking here.

Teacher Dude's anatomy class

Ok, I'm officially amazed. At the end of today's lesson one of my students asked me if there were any podcasts connected with anatomy that I could find (he doesn't have ADSL at home). I just took a quick look in itunes and found four!!! You've just got to love the internet. I'll be downloading as many of them as possible in order to burn a CD to give to Vassilis. Amazing!

Thank you for your help

See here for link

A few days ago I moaned about the lack of maps here in Thessaloniki, since then I've been lucky to have got loads of information from people who read this blog and got in contact.

So thanks to;

Kassandra who let me know about Navigation.gr

andAthanasios Bountos at Saloniki.org who sent me the map.

Using mobiles in the classroom

In tonight's lesson I got my Proficiency class to record themselves with their mobile phones doing a speaking exercise and then listen to their performance. The idea was that they choose a topic from the course book they want to talk about for one minute, while their partner times and records them. Afterwards they listen to their answer and their partner discusses ways in which they can improve. Then roles are reversed.

This is a great way to make students aware of any persistent mistakes they have in pronunciation.

"I think I'm turning Japanese."

Teacher Dude in Katakana script. Check out this site to see how your name is spelt in Japanese.And this is Craig in Kanji;

EFL/ESL and films

This idea, like so many great ideas, is so simple that you kick yourself for not having thought of it first.

"Last night in one of the classes that I taught here in the Community College, I put students in pairs and asked them to choose two letters of the alphabet. Then the pair had to use those two letters to make a movie title. For example a team might choose M and T. They could make a movie title like, "Murder Train." Then I told them to make up a story line for that movie."

Thanks to Daniel Kirk, EFL in Japan.

Teaching in Greece - The dark side

While surfing (in vain) for other Greek language schools using blogging I came across a site that, as the saying goes, "Tells it as it is". Although Daniel V is talking about a small, provincial town in northern Greece, most of what he mentions is true for the rest of the country;

"It wasn't just that they were supposed to be get-to-know-you classes. You were supposed to be friendly, while at the same time being strict and imposing iron discipline so that they would respect you, while making it clear that this was nothing personal. You had to entertain them, but get them started in the book and make sure they followed the book in a boring way, so as not to let them get too excited at the fun they were having learning English. Furthermore, you could give them maybe one game, as long as it didn't get out of hand, and then you were asked to throw them out of the class if they got too noisy."

See here for the rest of the article.

A great student blog

Today I had a great lesson with one of my private students in which we worked on a video that we posted on her blog. The idea started off as a quick one minute introduction but as we discussed it more it turned into an interview in which both of us worked on finding the most interesting questions and answers. I then taught her how to use Windows Movie Maker and explained that we'd post the video as a way of letting the world know more about her life.

Check out her wonderful blog and leave a comment, I'm sure she'd appreciate it.



Maybe we've discovered a new internet idea; the video meme?

An ancient Greek computer?

I came across this fascinating article just now at the BBC site.

"The Antikythera Mechanism, discovered more than 100 years ago in a Roman shipwreck, was used by ancient Greeks to display astronomical cycles.

Using advanced imaging techniques, an Anglo-Greek team probed the remaining fragments of the complex geared device.

The results, published in the journal Nature, show it could have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses."

See here for the rest of the article.

Email scams - an example

I just opened my email and the first thing that I read was this;

"JULIUS AKIM
FEDERAL MINISTRY OF WORKS & HOUSING
IKOYI LAGOS
NIGERIA.

Dear Sir,

I know that this letter will come to you as a surprise but please regard it with full attention, I am Mr. Julius Akim by name, i am heading the officials from the Federal Ministry of Works & Housing (FMW&H),Federal Ministry of Finance and the presidency, making up the contract review panel(CRP)set up by the Federal Government of Nigeria to review contracts awarded by the past military administration. In the course of our work in the CRP,We discovered that, this fund which resulted from grossly over-invoiced contract executed for the FMW&H during the last administration.

The companies that executed the contract have been duly paid and the contracts commissioned leaving the sum of US$42.462Million floating in the Escrow, I have therefore been mandated as a matter of trust by my colleagues in the panel to look for an oversea partner to whom we could transfer the sum of US$42.462M by legally subcontracting the contract entitlement to your company.

We will be able to discuss a favorable percentage after a positive response from you. All logistics are in place and all modalities worked out for the smooth conclusion of the transaction within ten to fourteen working days of commencement after receipt of the following information from you. your full name, address, details and activities, private telephone & fax numbers. this information will enable us to make application and lodge claims to the concerned ministries and agencies in your favor and it is pertinent to state that this transaction is based entirely on trust as the solar bank draft or certified cheque drawable in any of the Central Bank of Nigeria correspondent Bankers in Europe and United states is going to be made in your name.

Please acknowledge the receipt of this letter through the email for now, you can reach me on juliusakim@mail.md

Regards

Mr. Julius Akim."

However, this is almost definitely a 419/"Nigerian" scam designed to get some poor sucker to part with their money in return for a much larger amount, which never appears. According to Wiki, variations on this con have been around since the 16th century. (see here for more background information)

Thessaloniki - a different view

Teaching My Big, Fat Greek Wedding In Greece

As part of the course book I use in preparing my students for the CAE and CPE exams there is a section on the different ways families work in England and Greece. To make the rather dry exercise a little more interesting, I decided to use My Big, Fat Greek Wedding in class. Not having a DVD player in the school I used my ibook to show the movie.

Lesson Plan

1 Ask the class if anyone has seen the movie. Since it was a popular film here in Greece ask those who have seen it to explain the basic plot to those who haven't (see here for summary).

2 Now outline the background to the scene you're about to show (1hr 02 mins to 1hr 7 mins).

Ian Miller, the only son of a very WASPy family meet Toula's, Greek American one for the first time and much cultural confusion ensues.

3 Ask students to write down all the differences they can between the two families.

4 Students discuss their answers in pairs then as a class.

5 Ask them if they think that the film offers a realistic portrayal of Greek people.

6 Students post their answers in written form on the class blog or video them and post them via YouTube.

This exercise worked very well and we got a lot of very sophisticated analysis of the film's portrayal of Greeks and Americans.

Pulling your hair out

I've been trying unsuccessfully for the last half hour to find a street in Thessaloniki. I'm due to start a new lesson today and it's in an area I'm not familiar with. After failing to find it in the city map in the front of the telephone directory I decided that I'd go on the internet. First, I tried Google Earth, and whilst the city is shown in pretty high resolution there are few place names - forget roads, you'd be hard pressed to find entire neighbourhoods.

Afterwards, I tried to Google "Thessaloniki street map", in both Greek and English with only limited success. The best on offer are scans of map of the centre. Not much use to me as the area I'm looking for is nowhere near there ( the city has over a million inhabitants).

Finally, I came across the University Of Macedonia and Thrace website (it's 1999 all over again) which purportedly gives information about the whole of the city. There I found this;

"Οδικοί χάρτες της Θεσσαλονίκης με εξελιγμένες δυνατότητες αναζήτησης για διευκόλυνση των μετακινήσεών σας:"

- http://www.saloniki.org/
- http://www.driveme.gr/
- http://www.231.gr/ - Χάρτες
- http://www.it.uom.gr/dromoi/

Translation

"Thessaloniki street maps with advanced search capabilities in order to make moving around the city easier."

Of the five links, four are either broken or irrelevant and the one that does take you anywhere vaguely useful shows the scanned map of the centre I mentioned earlier. Annoyed, I decided to send them an email asking the designers to update the information, only to find out that you can't do this without a password!!! Meaning they've sealed themselves off from any outside contact! Welcome to the new "high-tech" primitives. This may explain their total non - appearance on the top 500 universities list.

In the end it took four phone calls and a lot of needless explanation to find out something that you should be able to do in less than 60 seconds.

PS

There is a happy end to this sad tale. Thanks to Kassandra I found a site that has all the information I was looking for. Check out www.navigation.gr.

Putting ideas into action

I thought I'd post gain a teaching idea which I talked about recently so you can see how it panned out in the class (see here for full lesson plan).


Imagine a situation:

You're the head of a refugee camp somewhere in a poor, developing country. The annual crops have failed once again and thousand of people arrive at the camp seeking food and medical help. The problem is that you have supplies enough for, at most 5000 refugees, however another 15,000 have come. As the days pass the death rates, especially amongst the very young and the very old rise dramatically. Despite repeated calls to the international community the aid promised by western governments fails to appear.

At this point a local drugs baron/warlord appears on the scene and makes a proposal; in return for supplying food and medical supplies for the camp you must agree to let him use the place as a cover for his cocaine/heroin/etc production facilities.

Do you agree?

In the future I'll ask all the students to respond to the situations like this on the class blog, either in written form or a video clip posted via YouTube. This way students get to choose a form which most suits them.

The most interesting thing about doing this exercise was how much effort the students in Chris's group made so as to make their announcement as convincing as possible. Also Chris worked especially hard on ensuring that his performance was as good as possible. Now I'm sure that knowing that all this was going on the net, and hence would be seen by others was a major factor

Chris's answer