Interactive PowerPoint: Ever heard of it before?

Hello my lovely readers!
How lucky I feel with the online course I am taking!

Every week I learn something new that I cannot wait to put in practice in my language classes.

This week was really special to me, why? Because I am a PowerPoint (PPT) Lover and I have used it in most of my classes.

But what I didn't know was that I could use it in a more interactive way so as to help my students to be more involved in their own learning process.

Having videos, links, objects and even a game on the slides are amazing ideas to make my PPT presentation more meaningful.

I am planning to redesign my presentations so as to add new interactive tools. My students are going to love it!

I am also thinking about asking them to create their own PPT presentations as a wrap-up so they can reflect on what they learnt every week. They may send them to their classmates via e-mail or put in on our moodle site. Have not gone through all the details yet though.

During this week I also learnt about how important group work is and you know what? I tried it in my last class and had a blast!

I must confess I was a bit lost when deciding where to stand during the class and walked a lot during the whole lesson from one group to the other but it was totally worth it!

The learners had more time and opportunity to speak, strong students had the chance to help weak ones and they even chose names for their groups: The girls, the best and the chosen ones!

Here are some pics of them enjoying the experience.

I am planning to hold all my classes with that seating arrangement.

Shall keep you all posted on the results.

Thanks for reading me!

Eve

Project Based Learning: Classes are not about what the teacher has to say anymore! Lovely!

Every day, more teachers realize that classes centered on them are no longer valid!

Project based learning is an approach that started as an ad hoc approach but developed later on as a great tool for enhancing our students' autonomy.

Having students search for meaningful information is an excellent way to make them get in touch with authentic materials and realia.

WebQuests are the best example of PBL

Have a look at the video above and you will get an idea of what I am writing about.

But, as I always like to think about the actual use of webtools and the real life scenarios most of us work, my question goes directly to those of you who have worked with WebQuests before:

What if there is only a PC with online access in the room?

What if we have many PCs but no internet access?

What if there are no computers at all?

I know we can have Webquests in paper format but, are they as useful and interesting to students as the ones online? no idea!

websites for developing Reading and Writing

Dear teachers:

This week I had the chance to explore all different kind of websites to develop reading and writing skills.

I read a lot about the advantages of using web tools to enhance students' writing and reading competences and I could not agree more with most authors and teachers when we all came to an agreement that learners need to be in touch with authentic material, from different genres and different formats so as to meet the different learning styles we deal with in our classrooms.

Students are writing more than ever so we should take advantage of the blogging and posting on social networks mania to make them practice reading and writing skills in their own context. What is more meaninful than that?

Let me reccomend you 2 websites I have been using. I think they can be really helpful for all ages.

a.- http://mashpedia.com/

Mashpedia aggregates multiple web feeds (streams of content from different sources) into structured articles about specific, encyclopedic terms, historic events and popular individuals, groups, organizations, companies, etc.

Every article provides a basic definition of the term, along with the most relevant videos about it, a stream of current Twitter messages, latest news, images, blog posts and links. Mashpedia also offers semantic connections between the articles, in form of links

b.- http://www.penzu.com/
Penzu is a simple online tool for creating a personal journal. Entries are automatically
dated and students can add titles and text as well as images which appear in the margin of
the page. They need to register to save their entries but this is quick and simple and only
requires an email address. The journal entries can be shared by email or can be printed up
and brought into class.