Something completely different

I love web 2.0 tools! No, that's rather an understatement! I adore tools! I enjoy exploring this vast sea of new technologies and  experimenting with them to see what would work best in my classroom.  Some of the tools are really awesome, but yesterday I stumbled upon one that is beyond awesome!!!! Videoscribe by Sparkol  is "a unique way to create engaging animated videos quickly and easily". It's something completely different! I've seen and admired such animated "doodle-style" videos so many times before and I always thought that you need to be an artist to produce such stunning pieces of art!

Until I saw a jaw-dropping video created by Adrijana Leko, an innovative and creative teacher from Croatia. And I immediately gave it a try and was euphoric all day yesterday and still am about this fabulous, fantastic, awesome, wondrous tool! Now I can draw too! I can be an artist as well!

So here's my first Videoscribe - eTwinning 3.0. It's a "promotional" video about a new learning event that Bart and I will be running in the eTwinning Learning Lab in September. Earlier this year we ran our first learning event during which we took our participants on a Learning Odyssey to explore the sea of web tools. This time we're inviting eTwinners to fly with us and to discover new horizons of learning and connecting in eTwinning 3.0. It's going to be something completely different too!

We're now cleared for take-off. Doors to automatic and cross-check!

English Spelling: Does It Make Sense?

Many of you have problems spelling English words. This often prevents you from reading or writing as well as you would like to.

Don't get discouraged!  Even though  English spelling often doesn't make seem to make sense, if you dig a little deeper, there  are often very good reasons that explain  the way many English words are spelled. 

Watch this great  video called Making Sense of English Spelling   from TED EDto learn more about  English spelling. It might help you understand it a little better. It might even make you want to learn more about  prefixes , suffixes, roots and even the history of English word.




LISTENING QUIZ: 
 
Go to Making Sense of English Spelling  and click on "THINK "to check your listening comprehension and how well you understood this video. Click on 'DIG DEEPER"  for some links to other resources on the web about English spelling.

For even more resources and practice with English spelling, go to my Editing and Error Correction  Page  and scroll down to the the SPELLING section. 

Summer in the shade with 2 eTwinning publications

With temperatures between 36-38 degrees Celsius here in Croatia, there's no better thing to do but to grab a book and find a shade somewhere near the beach. Instead of a book, I'd suggest grabbing these 2 inspiring eTwinning publications.


Daniela Bunea, English teacher from Romania, is the leader of the Visibility of eTwinning projects Group on the eTwinning portal and the editor-in-chief of the eponymous newsletter,  published once a year. Each newsletter brings a huge number of articles written by teachers from across Europe about their innovative projects and creative ideas that they have put into practice.

I'm especially proud to be one of the contributors to this year's newsletter. I've written an article about the learning event that I co-ran in the Learning Lab of the eTwinning portal earlier this year.


Another reason why I'm tremendously proud and deeply honoured are three more articles in the newsletter that mention my projects and „endeavours“as being inspirational, creative and dynamic:

·         Tatiana Popa in her "My eTwinning Odyssey" says she enjoyed taking part in the above mentioned learning event,

·         Seraphine Francoise Altamura in her"eTwinning Annual Conference 2013: Citizenship and School Collaboration"  talks about the workshop that I co-led in Lisbon,

·         Rositsa Minvea in her"Glogster EDU in eTwinning projects" speaks highly of my Greetings from the world project.

I really, really appreciate it very much, Tatiana, Francoise and Rose.

Another publication that I had a huge pleasure of taking part in its creation is Teachers' Rooms handbook. In December last year I took part in "eTwinning goes social: creating and managing a successful Teachers' Room, a learning event run by expert teacher Laura Maffei. It was an excellent CPD event with lots of fruitful discussions and sharing of knowledge, ideas and experiences. The result of our dedicated work is a Teachers' Rooms Handbook where you can find lots of useful tips, suggestions and advice on how to create a virtual teachers' room and how to keep it alive and useful to its members.

Zen and the Art of Teachers' Rooms Manteinance

Publish at Calameo or read more publications.

Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group Newsletter 3 - July 2013

Publish at Calameo or read more publications.

So, don't hesitate, grab these two publications and get yourself inspired.
Visibility of eTwinning projects
Zen and the Art of Teachers' Rooms Maintenance

World's Best Ad: Listening Quiz

based on information from a variety of sources including Reuters, Ad Week,Wikipedia, The Guardian,  BBC Guardian,  Business Weekly, the Dumb Ways to Die Campaign website.

Young people tend to ignore Public Safety Announcements (PSAs) warning them against the dangers of.......everything. Not only are they gloomy and depressing, but they're also boring!

So.....what's an ad agency to do when it wants to make them sit up and pay attention to a safety message? 

Make it irresistibly fun, catchy and incredibly easy to share with friends  on social media ... .just like everything else they get a kick out of.

That's exactly what an Australian advertising agency did with Dumb Ways to Die , an  animated  train safety spot for the Melbourne Metro, which has become the most  successful ad campaign in the history of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

The three minute TV and online commercial ( or PSA) is part of a much larger campaign that includes billboards, radio spots, karaoke jingles played in train stations and a website in which people can promise to be safe. 

The PSA itself a shows an animated video of cute little kidney shaped creatures doing the stupidest things you can imagine -  sticking forks in toasters, keeping a rattlesnake as a pet, setting fire to your hair, and selling both your kidneys on the Internet among others. 

All of the stupid actions end up in horrible and completely senseless fatal accidents. 

The ad then goes on to push the idea that the the dumbest and most pointless way to die is to be careless around trains. 

Within days of its release, the ad became a viral Internet hit racking up more than 20 million views. Today, more than 55 million viewers have seen it.  

The campaign, by advertising agency McCann Melbourne, swept the awards at this year's  Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, winning a record five Grand Prix awards, 18 Gold Lions, three Silver Lions and two Bronze Lions, the most ever awarded to one campaign in the festival's 59-year history.


It is the second year in a row that the top film award has gone to a campaign with a social message . 

US fast food chain Chipotle won last year  with a similarly with a  similarly-styled animation-with-music ad about sustainable farming and production. 

Here's the ad itself.



How did they do it?

Accidents and deaths among young people on Melbourne's trains have been increasing for years, but advertisers needed to find a way to promote a message about  safety in a way that would reach its intended viewers.  

"The idea for a song started from a very simple premise: What if we disguised a worthy safety message inside something that didn't feel at all like a safety message, " said John Mescall, executive creative director of McCann ad agency.   

"So we thought about what the complete opposite of a serious safety message should be and came to the conclusion that it should be an insanely happy and cute song." 

The song, composed by members of Australian bands the Cat Empire and Tinpan Orange,  has hit music charts in 28 countries, inspired three parody videos ( see video at the bottom of the article)  that have each been watched over a million times, was recently turned into an iPhone game that is now the seventh most popular free app in Apple’s (AAPL) app store, and is being turned into a children’s book. 

Fewer Accidents 

It has also been very successful in its original goal, preventing accidents on commuter rails in Melbourne. In the three months after the campaign was launched, the system experienced a 21 percent reduction in accidents and deaths compared to the same period last year. The goal was 10 percent.


According to an article in  Business Week  ,“Dumb Ways to Die” has been  success for some obvious reasons. It’s catchy and it's funny.  But it has another, less obvious, thing going for it: the power of positivity.
 
Two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied the New York Times most-e-mailed list (PDF) for signs of what kind of emotions were associated with people sharing information through email and other social media .

What they found was that people like content with positive messages - even when the message is a serious one.  The Dumb Ways To Die campaign had both, and therefore appealed to the widest audience - both adults, teenagers, children and even educators.

An industry analysis of Dumb Ways to Die 

Watch the following video on the story behind the campaign and answer the comprehension questions.



The Dumb Ways to Die PSA and train safety campaign has inspired many video parodies - with even more suggestions  and idea. 

Parodies and other associated videos  

BEFORE WATCHING:

Work on brainstorming, vocabulary and grammar . 
Before you watch any of the following videos, see if you can come up with your own lists of ideas for each of the titles. 

Then compare your ideas with the ones suggested in each video. How did you do?   

• The Dumbest Ways to Die in Video Games
• Dumb Ways To Die in Movies  
• Dumber Ways to Die ( Parody) 
• Annoying Orange: Annoying Ways to Die
• Dumb Ways to Die in Rio  
• Cool Things to Find   
• The Walking Dead Dumb Ways to Die 

Here is one more parody, but with a message about living rather than dying. Before you watch, try to come up with as many "smart ways to live" as you can. Then, compare your list with the ones in the video.

Did you enjoy this post and the activities? 

Please leave a comment below to let me know how I'm doing.  Share the post and its activities with others through email or any other social media. 

eTwinning goes Dubrovnik

If you are a member of the Twinning community, you're provided with lots of opportunities for professional development, not only online but also in the real world. Workshops and contact seminars are organized in different countries all over Europe all year round and teachers can apply for those that are chosen by their national agencies.

Right now there are four workshops for Croatian teachers to choose from: in Stockholm, Billund, Brussels and Dubrovnik.The deadline for applying is August 28.

The contact seminar in Dubrovnik is organized by Dunja Babić, the NSS for eTwinning, and the staff at the Croatian  National Agency. Ten Croatian teachers will be selected to come to Dubrovnik and meet their colleagues from several European countries. Together they will learn about the Cross-curricular collaboration using Web 2.0 tools, make new contacts and start new eTwinning projects.

I'm especially looking forward to it because I'm one of the three invited speakers.

On the first day I'll be presenting along with Bart Verswijvel. Our presentation is named eTwinning on the Beach - quite appropriately so, considering the place where it will be held:

Oops sorry, not there, but quite close to it:

As you can see, it's almost on the beach. Bart and I have already done a joint presentation in Lisbon, which was very successful.

On the second day I'll be giving a workshop entitled "A little bit of magic with collaboration tools" and I promise you there'll be magic! And tools of course. But I won't forget the pedagogy behind the tools either.

Lidija Kralj, a Math and ICT teacher,  will also be giving talks. I'm  looking forward to her talk about Zondle which I would like to use with my students.

It really looks promising, doesn't it?  Contact your NSS and apply for the first contact seminar organized in Dubrovnik, one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the pearl of the Adriatic. Gosh, I really like this city!

Spice up your classroom with games

Cape Town is a beautiful city - I visited it in 2010 when I took part in the Microsoft Global Forum. I visited it again yesterday - but only virtually - I gave a presentation about games in education to South African teachers. Fiona Beal, a global hero in education and my dear friend who I first met in Cape Town, then later in Seattle, invited me to share my knowledge about this topic - most of which I learned at last year's workshop  in Swindon, orgnaized by Intel and led by the one and only Ollie Bray.
 
Here's the recording of the webinar, as well as the links to the websites and tools I mentioned in the webinar and to the Schoolnet SA blog. And my slides are right here:

Spice up your classroom with games from Arjana Blazic

Top 10 iPad Apps For Learners of English

 

It is always a pleasure to publish a guest post by anyone with an interest or expertise in some area of the English language, or of English culture. 
 
If you are anything like my own students here in Vancouver, many of you probably own and use an iPad. If you do, some of the apps below might help you to improve your English, even when you are on the go. 

The following guest post is by Jeffrey Hill, who writes The English Blog and teaches at  the EM Normandie business school in Le Havre, France

The i Pad the Ultimate Language Learning Tool 

It would be no exaggeration to call the iPad “the ultimate language learning tool”. With one portable device you can access an unlimited amount of authentic  material (podcasts, videos, news, books, websites, … )—all in the target language.

But what makes the iPad really special are the apps. And when it comes to apps, learners of English in particular are spoiled for choice. There are literally hundreds of apps available. These fall into two main categories: those specifically aimed at learners of English, and those which are not, but which are useful all the same.

The problem is knowing which ones to choose. Some are free; some cost money. Some are good, some are not so good—and some are just plain bad! So, to help teachers and students identify the most useful apps, I recently started a new blog, iPadEnglish.
 
Here, in no particular order, are my

Top Ten iPad Apps for Learners of English. -

Newsy for Ipad

One of my favourite video news sites is Newsy.com. It’s not specifically designed for learners of English, but the transcripts and on-screen extracts from source articles make the short video reports much more accessible than they would otherwise be. The videos are organized into categories (World, US, Politics, Business …), so you can easily find something of interest. However, the beautifully-designed Newsy app is something else again. It works brilliantly on the iPad—and it’s free!


Google Translate


You can translate words and phrases between more than 60 languages using Google Translate for iOS. For most languages, you can speak your phrases and hear the corresponding translation (which, of course, you can’t do on the web-based version). The voice recognition is not perfect, but as long as you speak slowly and clearly, the results are impressive. Note, however, that you will need an internet connection to use Translate.



English Idioms Illustrated


This beautifully-illustrated app from Professor Potts (aka Aidan Potts) explores the story behind more than 160 idioms from “Achilles’ heel” to “Wrong side of bed”, as well as explaining what they mean.  The first 23 idioms are included for free and the rest are available at a small price. You can see a selection of the illustrated idioms on the Learn English Idioms microsite


Sounds: The Pronunciation App


Winner of the British Council ELTons Award 2012 for ‘Innovation in learner resources’, Sounds is Macmillan’s mobile English pronunciation app for both students and teachers. The free version includes Interactive Phonemic Charts for British English and American English, as well as some taster activities. In the Premium version ($5.99) you can look up, listen to and record words in the WORDLIST, PRACTISE your pronunciation skills, test yourself with the pronunciation QUIZZES, use the phonemic TYPEWRITER, and LEARN with Top Tips, videos and more.


MyWordBook

MyWordBook2 is a free interactive vocabulary notebook app for language learners from The British Council. The app lets you learn, practise and review words using sets of flashcards. Each flashcard contains pictures, sounds, example sentences, translations and notes taken from Cambridge University Press learner dictionaries. The app comes with a random selection of around 25 words at intermediate level, and if you register

Dictionary.com There is an excess of English dictionaries available in the App Store. Some are free, some are not. Some work offline, some do not. Some are good, some are not so good. They all offer different features, which makes it hard to know which one(s) to choose. One of the best is Dictionary.com, which includes both a dictionary and thesaurus. The good news is that it’s free. Another advantage is that you don’t need an internet connection to search for words, an important consideration if your Wi-Fi connection is unreliable or non-existent Business Words At the risk of sounding like one of those guests on Desert Island Discs who choose their own records, I’m going to blow my own trumpet and recommend an app I developed myself! Business Words (free at the time of writing) is a ‘hangman’ type game aimed at students or professionals who have a good level of English but wish to improve their vocabulary in the field of business and management. Players have to find the missing word in a sentence relating to a specific business topic by guessing individual letters. The words and sentences are organized into 12 topic areas: Economy, Law, Industry, Trade, Marketing, Human Resources, Banking, Travel, Retailing, Finance, Communication, and Technology. There is also a ‘Mixed Bag’ featuring words from all categories. Translations of all words are given in French. Spell Tower    There are literally dozens of word games available for the iPad, but one of my favourites is SpellTower ($1.99). The game features a grid of letter tiles that you use to spell words by selecting adjacent letters. Each correct spelling removes tiles and earns you points. The goal of the game is to remove as many letter tiles as possible. Very addictive—and fun!   Conversation English HD There aren’t many actual English courses available in the App Store, and they can be expensive. Although Conversation English won’t win any prizes for originality, the app is professionally produced, and each of the 20 dialogue-based lessons offers a varied range of activities. An Idiom Dictionary with Audio Pronunciation is also included. With enough material for many hours of study, Conversation English represents good value at $4.99.   The interactive Grammar of English There’s a real shortage of decent grammar apps for the iPad, so the interactive Grammar of English (aka iGE) is an essential acquisition for iPad-owning English teachers and more advanced learners.  iGE comes in two versions. iGE Lite is free. It has a complete glossary, and three units of course material dealing with word classes, nouns and determiners. The complete iGE covering the whole of English grammar is on sale for $6.99. Interactive exercises and puzzles aim to reinforce learning and make it fun. My (rather obvious) advice would be to download the free ‘lite’ version and see what you think. You can always buy the complete app after. I would love to hear your feedback on any of these apps? Have you tried one? Do you have any recommendations for others?   Leave a comment below with any reviews or recommendations.