Day 5, 18th August 2017

Let s revise Blogging!
There are 2 types of blogs:
· Personal blogs (not usually shared with other people) for reflections, comments, telling about personal experiences….
· Class blogs , used as a diary but sharing with students has often proved to be a disaster! These blogs are not used for Class activities. There are other much better tools for them( Edmodo, for example). If we want our students to work on blogs we should ask each one of them to create one and then give them tasks to perform. This way, their blog could be a collection of all the digital
assets they have created and be a sort of e-portfolio.

The main steps to the creation of a blog are:
1. posts,
2. labels,
3. Formatting When you copy and paste from other sources, you may copy also the format so that then it is difficult to go back to your original choice. There is a tool (top, left) to eliminate all formatting so you can do it again as you wish.
4. extra pages,
5. gadgets,
6. Design (never have a background image as it makes the blog really difficult to read)
7. Settings
We will learn more about design and settings later on .
Very important!!!! CONSISTENCY : All the titles, pictures should have the same size (200x300 for images).
....and never forget..CONTENT IS KING!!!
So on the left, you should always have the list of your posts first, than the labels, then your profile then all the gadgets you want.

Next , today we moved on and did some challenging activities from
breakingnewsenglish.com , an astonishingly rich website with plenty of activities for different levels. The activities are automatically generated so not everything is perfect but in general two activities are great: Text Jumble and No letters.
The same author also created a similar website for lower levels (PET students): listenaminute.com
The two websites provide teachers with an incredible amount of activities that can be further combined and developed .

For example: listening activity + note taking. Now, in couples, discuss what you heard. Then, second listening.
While organizing activities, let’s keep in mind they should be:
· Communicative
· Engaging
· User-friendly
· Contextualized
· Personalized
· Affective
The last one is particularly meaningful: at the end the students should be asked to make the content “their content” (write an email to a friend who suffers about a disease about the latest scientific discoveries about his/her problem, write a poem, find a picture about this and be ready to describe it)

Teaching tip:

1. when you have group activities like these, COMPETITION is highly motivating so teachers should create it.
2. The cut off point of an activity is when the first group has finished (unless you have another connected activity planned ).
3. You can also set a fixed time. Not important if the students haven' t finished it. The can do it for homework.

Now, some new technology! SCREEN CAPTURE
What is it for? It is/can be used in many situations.
In education , mainly for audio feedback (by the way, this is what Russell Stannard got many prizes for!!!)
What possibility does it offer?
We can receive our students’ digital text texts , give them a oral feedback (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, text cohesion, content…) highlighting the text in a different colour and recording whatever we do on the screen.
What are advantages of this type of feedback? Many!!!
· It is highly individual
· Motivating
· You can also give a general feedback to the class when same mistakes are repeated by many
· These general feedbacks are reusable for the teachers!!
· Students feel they are important to the teacher!!!
· While getting the feedback they will be listening and reading at the same time
· A big amount of feedback can be given
· It is a form of distant learning but students will feel the teacher’s presence
· It tells much more than a simple “good”
· Negative feedbacks can be made softer , more polite, less direct

Where else is screen capture used?
· Tutorials about technology
· Online courses
· Pronunciation activities (to improve accuracy and intonation)
· Describing pictures
· Flip classes
· IMPORTANT: students can record themselves while presenting a
PowerPoint presentation. The recording can be sent to the teacher who will give feedback.(feedback question list is in Edmodo/folder/day5 by Russell Stannard)
By the way, let’s not forget that in any PowerPoint presentation we must at least show attributions (“the images are from www……”)
· Give instructions about exams (PET, FIRST…)
· Explain grammar rules
· Record any lesson they want to give

How can we get this Screen Capture technology?
Some is for free: Jing, Screencast-o- matic, Camstudio;
Some have a cost: SnagIt (30 $ , once in a lifetime), Camtasia.