EFL20

RSS, Google Reader (and Glogster)

2010-01-24T17:16:00.000-08:00

Video tutorials and links for RSS and Google Reader.

Multimedia poster created with Glogster for Edu http://edu.glogster.com

For anyone who hasn't yet "met" Glogster, here are the basic facts, taken from the site:
# A web 2.0 platform that easily allows users to upload photos, videos, text, audio and more to create a unique online, interactive poster.
# A simple and easy interface designed to introduce basic concepts to students.
# A series of teamwork mechanisms to allow users to publish and share their creations and to collaborate with other users on joint efforts.
# A secure, private, safe platform that can be monitored directly by teachers.

5 minute Video Tutorials for Edublogs Basics

2009-12-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

5 min – Video Tutorials for Edublogs Basics

Here are a few video tutorials I put together for an online PD course on integrating tech into the EFL teaching learning process. The videos explain how to perform basic actions in Edublogs blogs, (wordpress). As they were created using jing, they’re all under 5 mins in length. I’ll be updating with more as the course progresses.
Don’t forget that there is a very comprehensive list of tutorials in the Edublogs Getting Started section, including 5 official edublogs video tutorials here.
VIDEOS

Signing Up for an Edublogs Blog
http://content.screencast.com/users/susantsairi/folders/Jing/media/2b3e7bbf-7fa1-4dd9-a4ab-8401e234c05c/2009-12-22_2009.swf
Get to know the Dashboard
http://www.screencast.com/t/MzBhZjQyZjI
Edit or delete default content add a new post
http://www.screencast.com/t/OTk3ZTQ2
Editing the About page
http://www.screencast.com/users/susantsairi/folders/Jing/media/835ffd1f-b4af-4dd0-a7ee-365853994e0a
Change your Theme
http://www.screencast.com/t/MjQyMjFhYTIt
Add a New Post
http://www.screencast.com/t/MDcwNTFm
Add graphics from your computer
http://www.screencast.com/t/ZWFlMjZjN2U
Add graphics from the internet
http://www.screencast.com/t/ZDE5MmVj

Teen Cell Safety Resources

2009-07-14T21:25:00.001-07:00

CELL PHONE SAFETY RESOURCES
http://www.simplek12.com/cellphonesafety
20% of teens text inappropriate pictures or videos of themselves.
81% of teen "sexters" are under the age of 18.
July is National Cell Phone Courtesy (and safety!) Month.
We want to help you and your school educate students, teachers, and parents
about "sexting" and other dangers teens face when using their cell phones.

For an informational video and to find out more, please visit:

Cell Phone Safety
http://www.simplek12.com/cellphonesafety

http://www.simplek12.com/cellphonesafety

Ada Lovelace Day: Connie,Lisa,Anne,Sheryl,Ariella,Ruthy

2009-03-24T21:19:00.000-07:00

I knew I'd have problems picking one woman even when I made the Ada Lovelace Day Pledge "I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire".

So I'd like to dedicate a post to the wonderful women teachers who make up a large part of my PLN. Teachers who are, in the words of Cathy Schrock, "Digital Pioneers",

"constantly looking for new and old technologies that will support teaching
and learning in a meaningful way ... they always share their findings with
others."

There are a few names that stand out in my mind as particularly fitting the above description. A visit to their blogs will do justice to their work more than anything I could write.

Connie Weber, Lisa Parisi , Anne Mirtschin, Sheryl A. McCoy

Of course I can't finish this post without mentioning fellow countrymates Ariella Levenberg, and Ruthy Ben Yishai

While it's officially 25th of March in my timezone, I do hope that it's still the 24th somewhere else...

Google Sites Blog: Sites goes international - but not in Hebrew

2008-10-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

Very excited, I clicked on the Google Sites Blog: Sites goes international link only to discover that Hebrew is NOT among the Lucky 38 :(

How does one actually get accepted as a volunteer for translating Google services? I've filled out the application form more than once but never been acknowledged.

Anyway, you can now use Google Sites in the following languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, English (UK), Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

OtherInBox Private Beta Invites

2008-09-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

The otherinbox team have allocated 26 beta invites for readers of efl20 blog :)
All you need to do to get your account is click on this link http://beta.otherinbox.com/signup/dd4e8

OtherInBox - "The Cure For Email Overload" launched at the TC50 conference in San Francisco earlier this month. As I mentioned in the previous post, I think this could be an excellent service for educators who need student email addresses to enable students to sign up for web services, while at the same time having to ensure their students' privacy.

otherinbox - solution for student accounts

2008-09-21T01:46:00.001-07:00

otherinbox.com is a new, still in beta service, which enables the user to create unlimited email addresses on the fly, based on his account it could be very useful for teachers needing to set up "fake" student email addresses to enable students to sign up to webservices.
The gmail+ system used by many educators is useful but not all web services support sign up from email addresses which incorporate a plus sign. Of course it is possible to sign up to many websites with a completely bogus mail address but that puts the dampers on retrieving passwords etc in the event that students forget them.

With otherinbox.com user (in our case, teacher) gets a mail subdomain which catches all mail sent to it. So if the subdomain is: itteacher.otherinbox.com mail sent to susan@itteacher.otherinbox.com and mail sent to jostudent@itteacher.otherinbox.com are both caught by the mailbox and automatically placed in the respective folder, ie the jostudent folder and the susan folder. This enables the teacher to see at a glance which alias has new mail, see screencapture. There is no need to set up the aliases ahead of time, they are created automatically when mail arrives in the inbox.

At present incoming mail can only be automatically forwarded to the account holders primary mail, however if it were possible to set up filters to forward to other mail accounts, I could see this as being an excellent service not only for enabling students to sign up for web services but also for moderating student mail.

Posted by email from susan's posterous

Post to Twitter and Blog from Posterous

2008-09-05T19:24:00.001-07:00

Posting to twitter, blogger and posterous from 1 email message.
Posterous, "blog from your email". Posterous automatically, publishes
attachments in suitable format.
If you haven't tried posterous yet, it's definitely worth checking out!

Posted by email from susan's posterous

10 Great Tips From Gmail Blog

2008-07-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

Official Gmail Blog: Gmail blog turns 1: Looking back at our 10 most read tips

Lots of useful tips in this post on Gmail blog. My personal favorite is number 7, which explains how to create on the fly email addresses using your 1 gmail account - useful for teachers wanting to create fake student accounts and also as an easy way of filtering incoming mail.

10) Have Gmail do your laundry - Suggest new features for Gmail.

9) Tips for importing old email to Gmail -

8) Edit contacts right from your chat list - Clean up your chat list and change contact information quickly

7) 2 Hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address - You can insert certain characters to your email address to get additional names out of it -- all of which still make it to your inbox.

6) How to find any email with Gmail search - How to use search operators so you can find any email the first time.

5) 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about

4) Top 10 little known Gmail features From "custom from" to creating events in Gmail - and other key features

3) Getting Gmail anywhere: IMAP versus POP - How to get Gmail on mobile phones and destkop mail clients

2) 3 Gmail Labs features that will spice up your inbox Popular Gmail Labs features: Superstars, Pictures in chat and Quick Links.

1) 9 reasons to archive -

Natioanl Geographic Widget

2008-05-03T15:05:00.001-07:00

Add the latest news, photos and more from National Geographic by way of widget.

MyStudiyo - Quiz Creator

2008-04-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

At MyStudio.com you can create two kinds of quiz, "Promote it Quiz" with your questions, "User Can Add Quiz" your questons and users' questions, you moderate. Or embed an existing quiz in your blog or web page, as I did just below.

The Optical Illusion Quiz

Publishing Google Forms to Blogger Blogs

2008-04-05T03:58:00.000-07:00

1) In your blog settings click on the "Email" tab.
2) Fill in the empty field in "mail-to-blogger address" - use something you can remember
3) Check the "Publish emails immediately" radio button - then save settings
4) Go to http://spreadsheets.google.com/newform, sign in
5) Create your form
6) Click on "Save" and "Next, choose recipients"
7) Write the email address for your blog in the "Invite" field
8) Choose any other options that suit you and edit the "Custom Confirmation" text.
9) Click on "Invite People"
The form is automatically published in your blog, and replies collected in a google spreadsheet.

See the form in previous post!

EduTwits

2008-04-05T03:53:00.001-07:00

 Just a small demo form

If you cannot view this form properly, you can fill it out here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p7zH8U11Pv3_LPqs-Gw7_bg&email=true

Google Form in Your Blog

2008-03-23T04:17:00.001-07:00

 Apparently, if your blogger account is set up to accept your posts by mail, you can post a google form directly to your blog.  This is my first attempt - Please answer the questions - not only, in order that I can check if it actually works, but to help my students find out a little about school in other countries.  Thanks in advance.

If you cannot view this form properly, you can fill it out here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p7zH8U11Pv38jj7yaY_0HTA&email=true

Create a Newpaper from Your Students' Blogs

2008-02-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

FeedJournal.com lets any blogger create one free PDF newspaper from their blog RSS. All you need to do is sign up with an email address, click on the "publisher" link, add the RSS feed for your blog and click on the "Generate Your Free Newspaper Now" button. The link to the pdf and a widget to embed in your blog will be sent to your email.
During the promotion period the free newspaper can include up to 20 pages.

Unfortunately the widget didn't work for my blog - however I uploaded the pdf to issuu.com and scribd.com in order to show 2 alternatives for embedding the newspaper.

In order to view the fullsize simply click on the widget below.

SortFix - A New Way To Search

2008-01-24T16:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.sortfix.com/ "start dragging - stop typing". How many times are EFL students frustrated because they simply don't have the vocabulary to refine their websearches.

Sortfix may just be the search engine to solve the problem.

A basic search on SortFix returns a results page which includes 4 boxes or "baskets". The first basket contains "power words" and "power phrases" (relevant keywords and phrases) the second basket contains the original keyword. In order to refine the search all we need to do is drag relevant words or phrases from the first basket into the second basket. There is a 3rd basket entitled "Remove" any results containing words dragged into this basket will be excluded from the search results. The 4th basket the "dictionary" may be useful for more advanced EFL students, however the definitions are too difficult for elementary. Clicking on the "more options" link will allow you to add further functions to the search.

The SortFix help page includes explanations and videos which demonstrate the different functions.

Twitter - @teachable moments

2008-01-20T09:33:00.000-08:00

from Langwitches blog…
Teachable Moment Twitter Account
Posted: January 19th, 2008, by Langwitches Following an idea that sprung out at me while I was writing my previous post, I have decided to create a Teachable Moment Shoutout account on Twitter.
The idea is as follows:
We are all looking to inspire and create teachable moments for our students. Many times these are impromptus, non-planned discussions and activities. Sometimes they pass as fast as they came, but will leave a long lasting impression on you and your students.
Our Twitter is relatively new for all of us and we are experimenting and experiencing what it dies for our own and for our students’ learning. Several ones of us have had a great experience with a twitter shoutout, followed by a Skype conversation, blog post and comments as well as direct “conversation” with 140 characters or less.
Tom Barrett’s GeoTweets: Inviting your network into the classroom
Chris Craft & Silvia Tolisano Arabic Mystery Writing
Please subscribe to Teachable Moment on Twitter if you are willing to commit yourself to be available, when your schedule permits, to help another teacher with a shoutout. Remember, that you might be someone’s partner from the other side of the world, which means it might not fall between your school hours, where you are with classes, paperwork or blocked access to twitter/skype. So don’t be shy and add yourself as a follower.
You can create an RSS to be alerted if anyone is writing a shoutout to “teachablemoment” by going to Tweetscan, searching for “teachablemoment” and then subscribing to the RSS feed.

MixBook - Collaborative Flip Books

2008-01-13T15:36:00.001-08:00

Very slick flash application for creating collaborative flip books. Unfortunately not particularly userfriendly or intuitive. However I love the concept and the final product! See the flippable version here.

Personalized MultiMedia Music Magazine -idiomag

2008-01-08T13:32:00.001-08:00

ideomag.com This has to be a great way to encourage advanced students to read. Not neccessary to sign up in order to create a magazine which includes music, photos, video and news articles, based on your preferred artists, but if you do sign up you can also keep archives and get a widget to embed in your blog or social network. Great fun!

Free Sponsored Yugma Premium for Bloggers

2008-01-04T06:31:00.000-08:00

Just come through the twitter vine - via Langwitches.
Free Sponsored Yugma Premium accounts for bloggers.

"Yugma want to thank all bloggers and Yugma users for taking the time to find Yugma, use Yugma, and share Yugma with others."
Effective today, and running until January 31, 2008, they'll be donating sponsored Yugma Premium accounts to bloggers who ask. Each sponsored account will be good for 12 months! Request an account by sending an email to blogger[at]yugma.com. Include your email address and blog website address. (Limit one sponsored Yugma account per blog site.
"Bloggers! What can you do with your Yugma Premium account? Well, just about anything, really. Meet with others virtually to review software or web apps. Collaborate online with your teams. Help others remotely. The clock is ticking. Request your sponsored account today!

After you get your sponsored account, you should consider signing up to Yugma's Affiliate Program to earn extra money."

Yugma : Free Web Conferencing, Online Meetings, Web Collaboration Service, Free Desktop Sharing, video conferencing, remote control software, net meeting, mac conferencing: about :: Features via kwout

SpellingCity

2008-01-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.spellingcity.com

This new site for spelling practice and games came from tbarrett via twitter.

After entering a list of words, students get a choice of activities which include spelling the words after listening to each one read aloud, both alone and in a sentence, word scramble and a hangman game.

SpellingCity.com - Home via kwout

This is the blurb for teachers from the site
"1. Tell your students about this site as the best way to practice for their tests.

2. Print out spelling games with your lists such as UnScramble & WordSearch.

3. Save your spelling lists on the site so they are ready for your students to practice with. To save your lists, you start by registering (which is totally free) above.

4. Put a link on your classroom's or school's website so this site is easily accessible to your students.

While SpellingCity is now up and running, it is far from finished. We have alot that we will add. For instance, we will provide printable and online learning games which work automatically with your spelling lists. In the meantime, here are some spelling and vocabulary learning games (which are not yet integrated). Bookmark us and come back soon... "

Why Frozen Peas - Social media to support a cause

2007-12-22T00:57:00.000-08:00

Why the frozen pea theme in my previous post? Last week pea avatars and "tweets" about peas, started to appear on Twitter, these led me to http://twitter.com/susanreynolds and to Susan Reynold's blog BoobsOnIce. Susan 'Cancer Patient in Social media soul' is using social media to help raise awareness to breast cancer. In her blog she shares her journey with us. In order to add 'a touch of lightness to what could have been a sad and serious tale' Susan relates how she used a bag of frozen peas as an ice-pack to sooth her cleavage after the initial diagnostic examination. As Twitter followers started to post pea avatars in identification with Susan and her desire to raise awareness to breast cancer the Frozen Pea Fund was set up. See also Duncan Riley on TechCrunch Canyou spare the peas?"

Random Clicks lead to A FlickR Flip Book and more

2007-12-21T23:25:00.000-08:00

I don't remember why I clicked on http://twitter.com/santaclaus or, once there, why I continued to click on http://twitter.com/heymilly - however whatever the reason I'm glad I did. From there I continued to click on the link to heymilly's blog "Thinking Past The Square". Many interesting and valuable posts and reccomendations to be found. Among them a post highlighting the uses of flickr as a storytelling tool and some useful and fun Flickr mashups.
Embedded below a flickr flipbook created at www.pimpampum.net/bookr/. After clicking on create book all you need to do is search for a flickr user or tag, drag photos into the book interface, add text and publish.

Or as a link
Frozen Pea Fund by social media

Why the frozen pea theme? http://twitter.com/susanreynolds Susan Reynold's blog "BoobsOnIce".
post pea avatars
Frozen Pea Fund
Duncan Riley on TechCrunch "Can you spare the peas?"

Twitter - in 140 chars and 30mins

2007-12-07T16:20:00.000-08:00

1) Teacher tweets request for comments on student blog
2) Network responds
3) 30 mins later student has comments+ from around the world

December Holidays Multicultural Greetings VoiceThread

2007-12-04T02:10:00.000-08:00

December or thereabouts is a time for celebrating! Christmas, Hannuka, Kwanzaa and Eid Al-Fitr all fall round about December time. I'm trying to create a voice thread where students can send vocal greetings around the world, to their friends and family.

The project has 2 stages.
Stage One:
add holiday graphics created by your students to a photo pool on Flickr or to a wiki I set up for the purpose. (I've uploaded my G2 Hannuka graphics to get the ball rolling)

Flickr Pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/festiveseaon
Wiki: http://grou.ps/festiveseason

Stage Two:
(after I add your graphics to the VoiceThread)
Have students record Holiday Greetings to their friends and family either in English or in L1.
Voice Thread: http://voicethread.com/share/27701/

Lingro - dictionary for any website

2007-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

Lingro.com will pop up a dictionary definition for any word you click on a website. No need to play about with site code. Simply type http://lingro.com/translate/
before the URL of the website. So if you wanted to try it now on this blog all you would have to do would be to type http://lingro.com/translate/http://efl20.blogspot.com (or click on the link).

If you register at Lingro.com the application will save a history of the words you have clicked to enable you to practice later. Other tools include, file uploader, bilingual dictionaries, for French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish, audio of the word, add new translations, ajax based dictionary which starts suggesting definitions after you type the first few letters of a word http://lingro.com/dictionary/

VoiceThread as a Collaborative EFL learning space.

2007-11-17T22:27:00.000-08:00

I don't think I have mentioned VoiceThread in this blog as yet, surprising really, as if I were to choose one web2.0 application for EFL elementary, voicethread would be the one.

Although a written description doesn't do it justice here is a quick summary of the features.
Userfriendly application which allows you to create an online album of photos, pictures, video and documents, invite others to contribute by recording their voices, doodles, text, video(web cam) or even uploading mp3 they have prepared ahead of time.
Threads can be public or private, comments allowed or not, moderated or not. Did I mention Userfriendly? VoiceThread is free for teachers, after requesting a teacher's account you can create unlimited VoiceThreads. Although it is neccessary to register with a confirmable email address, one account can be used for a whole classroom, teacher simply needs to add extra identities to his account ie an identity for each student.

So why the intro? Until last week I had only tried voicethread with a small group of students, however last week my two 5th grade classes (about 70 students) started working on this thread.
I was happy to see that the interface was easy for them to learn, but much happier when I finally got home at the end of the day and could listen to their work.
They did a really good job!
I'm now looking for classes to join us on the thread, it is moderated so comments won't show up until I approve them - (yes, a couple of my students recorded things that I'm happy I got a chance to erase before they were seen/heard by others - also a couple of the student recordings were drowned out by a very loud teacher - who has only just realized exactly how loud she is!)

I have started a collection of voicethreads for efl elementary it can be seen at
http://iteachr.buzka.com/efl_voicethreads if you'd like to add yours to the list just add a comment to this post.

One year mark for Google Apps Education

2007-11-02T05:05:00.000-07:00

Official Google Blog: One year mark for Google Apps Education Edition

Google apps is an excellent opportunity for schools to use a set of web20 tools without having to create multiple accounts on seperate websites.

Apps included are Gmail, personalized google startpage, docs and presentations, shared address book, web-based multi-user chat and more.

It's a great shame that the foreign language versions of the apps lag behind as far as features go.

Still, maybe the disadvantage can be turned into an advantage! The idea of being able to chat right from within their mailbox, may just be enough to encourage my 5th graders to try the English interface.

I'll let you know!

Nice Surprise! Old friends, New friends!

2007-10-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been quite a while since I created this blog, but finally found the time to visit in order report on what's been going on in our EFL-Tech classroom (One 45 min lesson per week).

A very pleasant surprise awaited me here, when I discovered a comment from Christine Southard, whom I "met" first on Classroom20. I've been so sidetracked for the last couple of months, translating the Ning platform to Hebrew, setting up a network for my EFL students and kicking off "Edureshet" a social network for Israeli educators (reached 50 members yesterday - yay!!) that I haven't been taking part in the English conversations going on - there just doesn't seem to be enough time to fit everything in.

Hopefully now that Edureshet seems to be about to take off I will be able to revisit the friends I made during the summer.

As I mentioned briefly above, we, Susanb the EFL teacher and I, have set up a Ning Network for our EFL 6th grade students.
Registering to the site, working inside the Ning space and creating their profiles and profile pics, takes time for our students, but it's all good! They are using English in an authentic way, and they are enjoying it so much that they visit the site from home too!

We have set up the site so that the profile questions- repeat vocabulary and grammar used in the first few weeks back at school. The profile pics have been used to revise Parts of the Body, ie students create avatars here. Next up they will add an "About Me" text to their pages, and create voki characters and after maybe we'll start blogging.

The original intention was to follow the pace of the regular EFL lessons, but so far that has proved impossible - however I think our pace will pick up once the students start to feel comfortable with the site.

For now it is wonderful to see the busy list of recent activity, to read the short comments they leave on each other's pages, to discover through their profile info that Eshel's hobby is building computer games, or Boaz plays guitar etc.. That Nir "am not so good English" (although he really is), to recieve a message from Adva through the in site mailing system ...
...and of course to recieve "friend's requests" :-) (although I haven't announced it anywhere - anyone sending me a friend request gets a gif of their name in glitter - I'm waiting to see how long it takes them to realize that)
as the site is a closed site instead of adding adding a link I'm uploading a couple of screenpics.

Hello World

2007-09-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog! As the name suggests I will be using this blog to post about EFL and Web2.0. more accurately, the combination of EFL, web2.0 and technology in general.

I started out 14 years ago teaching EFL in elementary school, but after catching the technology bug moved away from EFL, to become a tech teacher.
This year the 2 come together for me, as I work with the EFL teacher at school, to build a joint EFL-Tech curriculum.

I am looking forward to this year for many reasons which I may go into later. Right now I've been online for most of the night and it's about time to drag myself away from the screen.